From left: John Bling, Latonya Styles, Sri Lanka, Oshun Xpressionz and Cosmic Elite. - Contributed

Members from five local dance groups, Elite Team, Dance Xpressionz, Black Blingers, First Class and M.O.B., returned from Russia where they were tutors at the recently concluded True Jamaica Dance Camp.

The five dancers represented Jamaica under an umbrella dance group run by Latonya Styles from First Class called Dance Ja.

The STAR spoke with Oshun Xpressionz, who represented Dance Xpressionz in Russia, and according to her, the workshop was necessary in an effort to reclaim aspects of Jamaican dance culture that was being misrepresented. "There is this new thing called Ragga Jam, that is teaching Jamaican dance moves in a diluted manner and it is being done by foreigners, so we are aiming to give dancehall our image and our face and make it into a real Jamaican product," Oshun said.

According to the dancer, dancehall dances are very popular in Russia, and Jamaican culture is equally intriguing to foreigners.

"We were invited to go to Russia to workshops to teach them dancehall culture but we ended up enlightening them more. They wanted to know about our food, our clothing and so we gave them lectures based on our musical development from ska, rocksteady straight back to dancehall," she said.

Oshun says her experience taught her the value of having knowledge of her Jamaican culture.

"We should know about our culture because the Jamaican culture is so rich and loved almost everywhere in the world ... everybody wants to learn about us, it's just amazing and makes me value the culture more," she said.

blacklist

Styles, who orchestrated the camp, revealed that the group had problems getting work permits because Jamaica has been placed on Russia's blacklist as a violent country, therefore they were only permitted to get tourist visas. "A Russian dancer called Polina approached me saying she wanted to come to Jamaica to learn dance moves but it would have cost too much to get people here from Russia, so we decided to host workshops in Russia in order to teach the moves, however, we had some problems getting work permits so we decided to just do a cultural exchange project instead," she said.

The workshops lasted for seven days and according to Styles, they brought samples of Jamaican food, and also taught Jamaican games in order to share as much of the Jamaican culture as possible.

Latonya Styles says that the five aim to be the voice of dancehall because the dancehall culture is being misrepresented internationally.

"In Europe, dancehall is huge, most of the persons who came to our workshops in Russia are dancehall teachers themselves so it's definitely a big thing there," Styles explained.

Styles also revealed that her next workshop would be in France this August. She also hopes to teach dancehall in places such as Cayman among other countries in the Caribbean region and Europe.