Dance Loyd: The journey, struggles and the dream

Laud Anoo Konadu populary known by many as Dance Loyd is striving to change the narrative and let people see dancing as a business and not just a hobby.

Dance Loyd’s journey has been a arduous one but his passion has kept him going and he is winning by the day.

The 28-year-old started as a footballer playing for Red Bull Academy in Ghana but had to switch careers after the team was dissolved years back.

“I was playing for red bull but it got dissolved, so I entered into dancing,

“I wanted to be like the Asamoah Gyan’s because I was really really good trust me, I was playing from the left wings because of height,” he said on The Day Show on TV3.

He explained that his parents were against the fact that he chose dancing over going to school and was sacked from home which led to him staying outside for close to two years.

“The starting was really difficult for me, to convince my parents, they sacked me from home, they were like I was the first born so they didn’t wanted me to go astray and were trying to talk to me but I insisted I wanted to dance,” he disclosed.

Dance Llyod decided to go professional in 2015 when one of his friends called Tagor was producing a dance movie and he was featured. He then started shooting short videos and others on social media.

All these didn’t give him the breakthrough he was looking for, he said.

In 2016, Nigerian artiste Patoranking organized an online dance challenge for his song ‘Available’ and the determined Dance Lloyd emerged as one of the top performers, he was featured in the music video which at the time of writing this article had 8.1M views on Youtube.

That was the begining of the young dancer’s breakthrough and he said he decided to dance full time after the shooting of the music video

“I joined a challenge online by Patoranking ‘available’, I got to be part of the people he selected, so I went to Nigeria for the shoot and he paid really well (2016-2017), it went well for me and I was like I’m doing this full time,” he said.

He now has an academy in three different countries – China, Ghana and USA and three towns in Ghana: Ho, Accra and Kumasi.

Named ‘Dance With Purpose Academy’, Dance Llyod has over 200 dancers he is training currently at the academy.

His biggest project was the feature on Beyonce’s Already video which has over 43 million views on Youtube and he said that collaboration opened several doors for him.

At age 28, one of Ghana’s finest dancer’s is dreaming to open a dance school, record an album of his journey and continue to give dancing in Ghana a new face and also change people’s perception about it.

Source: 3news.com