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

Following Ricky Trooper's meeting with selectors and disc jockey's on Sunday, the dancing fraternity has decided to host their own meeting today to start their own representative body.

The meeting will be hosted at DanceJa dance school in Half-Way Tree and according to dancer Latonya Styles, who also operates the school, Ricky Trooper is looking out for selectors and disc jockeys, however, dancers need representation too.

Also backing the movement to create a representative body for dancers are John Bling of Black Blingaz and Keiva.

"The meeting today, we just want to group the dancers under one umbrella because we want representation and a voice for the dancers, because from the (recent) meeting it's clear that nobody nuh business bout dancers," Latonya Styles said.

From today's meeting, the dancers hope to unearth solutions for some of the issues currently facing dancers, including the noise abatement act, lack of unity, copyright from foreigners, professionalism, contracts, identification cards and improving working relations with dancehall artistes and promoters.

"We want to discuss even entrepreneurship and alternative methods to make money out of dancing because I want to make them aware of what is going on in the world. Because many dancers are unaware that we are losing dancehall abroad," Latonya Styles said.

She also encouraged corporate companies to get on board with dancehall and fight for its survival. She says dancehall has been one of the main agents used to sell liquor and other beverages over the years.

The outspoken businesswoman/dancer Keiva added that dancers were tired of being quiet, and they are demanding their respect.

"Is a long time we have been going through things and we haven't been speaking up, but we are going to start talking now. This is not only a response to Ricky Trooper's meeting with the selectors and DJ, this is about everybody who has not given dancers their respect. We need to be benefiting from our dance moves, we need to be featured in international music videos for our dances. All of the exploitation has to stop now ... at the end of the day dancehall is boring without dancers," she said.

Black Blingaz dancer John Bling says he is depending on the meeting to resolve internal issues among dancers. He believes with the existence of internal conflicts, it's impossible to counteract external problems.

"I wanted this meeting from last year to protest against our exploitation in a peaceful way, and to see if we can resolve certain things, but we have to fix things internally first, and I hope we can accomplish that in this meeting," he said.

John Bling is also orchestrating the production of a collaborative dancehall single which will feature several notable local dancers. The song is hoped to boost the unity among dancers and spread the message across the dancing fraternity.

DanceJa is located at 11A Central Plaza, Constant Spring Road, Kingston 10. The meeting will commence at 12 noon.

"So Mad Michelle, Latesha, John Hype, Shady Squad, everybody, I can't call all your names now, but you're invited to the meeting," Keiva concluded.