A South African dance known as isiPantsula (Pantsula dance) was recently broadcast to the world, when Beyonce featured Mozambican dance group Tofo Tofo in her latest music video, Run The World (Girls).
Pantsula was originally a word used to describe a 1950′s township sub-culture with its own dialect, dress-code and dance form. Since the 1980′s pantsula has become widely popular first spreading into Africa and more recently amongst dance enthusiasts around the world.
In her video Beyonce and the Tofo Tofo duo start the routine with a knee jerking “kwasa kwasa” (a dance rhythm where the hips move back and forth, knees in and out while the hands move to follow the hips), which progresses into a contemporary dance hybrid that culminates in an authentic pantsula step.
Through constant reinvention pantsula has become more of an umbrella term describing the many expressive-dance-styles that emerge and evolve almost daily in townships around the country.
