Dance is life: They came together six years ago, with the aim of using dance to speak to young people. Today, they are doing much more than dance. Barbara Akite spoke to Oscar Romeo Opiyo, a co-founder of the the Luo Revolution Crew.
Tell us about the Luo Revolution Dance Crew.
We are a dance group that was founded in 2013. The group is made up of five members; Oscar Romeo Opiyo, Engel Ojok, aka Engel Breezy, Edmond, aka O4 and Innocent Okot, aka Toy Wod Luo and Mark Baker Ochola, aka Luo Dude.
What inspired you to start the crew?
Our love and passion for dancing and then the desire to make our community a better place for the youth.
But we started dancing together mainly to promote talent and bring a positive change among the youth by giving them a platform to make a living through dance.
Besides dance, what kind of activities do you engage in as a group?
Besides dance, we also do business, for example selling branded T-shirts and jumpers and we also invest in farming.
How do you keep the group relevant to your audience?
We produce video clips of our dances and post them on our various social media platforms. We also reach out to our other audiences through community outreaches.
Where do you see yourselves in the next five years?
We expect to create employment opportunities for more youth through talent shows. This way, we will be able to recruit more people into the group, start up our own dance studio and hopefully, we will be embraced on bigger stages such as BET, MTV Music Video Awards, as well as working with international artistes.
What are some of your achievements so far?
Since our establishment in 2013, we have received quite a number of certificates, won trophies and bagged prize money from various competitions. We have been four-time winners of Pyem Myel Dance Competition, winners of Uganda’s Best Dance Group, winners of Swagg Team Teens Award, Ihits Award and Northern Uganda Entertainment Awards as Best Dance Group.
We also got a Certificate of Ambition from Uganda’s Best Dance Group in 2017 and a Certificate of Participation from Charity Walk organised by Support the Diabetes Organisation in 2016 and 2017.
What is unique about your crew?
We are more of a family than friends. We are transparent in our deals, we support, respect each other and are flexible in the sense that we adjust to any type of dance style.
Do you have other jobs?
Professionally, I am a medical laboratory technician, Luo Dude and Toy Wod Luo are artists, Poly Breezy did engineering and Engel Breezy is a social scientist.
How reliable is dancing as a career?
It is reliable because through stage performances, music videos and offering dance classes to people, we are able to raise money. It all gets down to what you have to offer your audience and clients to attract them for business.
