Dance with Peter: 9-yr old dazzles at Abuja audition (See)

•As six finalists emerge

The Abuja auditions for the much-publicised Dance with Peter, has produced six winners.

The event held last Friday, as kick off of the Glo-sponsored reality show in collaboration with Peter Okoye, the one-half of P-Square.

The successful candidates are a 24-year-old professional dancer,

 Yemi Afolabi Osokoya; a 21-year-old National Open University undergraduate, Miracle Chinonso Nelson, and a female architect, Mariam Ahmed.

Also, among the finalists are male dancer, Ibrahim Afeez Abiodun, female dancer Amenze Blessing Omoregie, and an all-male dance group called ElevatorzNg, made up of five Theatre and Cultural Studies undergraduates of Nasarawa State University. The members include Atuonwu Samson, Kelvin Anyaruoh, Jekeygreen Emmanuel, Michael Atuonwu and Godrich Olokor Ogenebroze.

All six finalists are expected to proceed to Lagos where they will battle contestants from other parts of Nigeria and Ghana for the grand prize of a brand new Toyota RAV 4, N3 million and the rare opportunity of featuring in P-Square’s next music video.

The first and second runners-up of the dance project will go home with a brand new Honda Civic car with N2million and a brand new Kia Rio car with N1million respectively. Both of them will also have the chance to feature in a top Glo Ambassador’s music videos.

Over 200 individual and group dancers, male and female of various ages slugged it out at the Musa Yar’Adua Centre venue of the Abuja audition of the dance competition.

Attracting great attention at the Abuja audition was a nine-year-old Divine Uche, who narrowly emerged with a qualifying ticket at the audition. He performed solo, executing mind-boggling stunts and winning himself a standby slot, which he inevitably yielded to more experienced dancers much later in the night.

On the judging panel were Peter Okoye, a Globacom ambassador and one of Nigeria’s most famous performing twins, PSquare,  Dance Queen, Kaffy,  and P-Squares’ choreographer, Nonso more popularly known as Don Flex.

The audition train is expected to next move to Accra for the Ghanaian leg holding at the National Theatre, South Liberia Road, Accra, today.

Organisers say this will be followed by Benin, Edo State, next week Friday, at the Oba Akenzua Cultural Center, Airport Road, Benin City. Lagos is next in line on Tuesday, September 8, at Bamako Studios, 1 Bamako Street, Ojodu, Lagos.

The final audition for “Dance with Peter” will be held in Port Harcourt on September 10 where prospective dancers in the show will be auditioned at the Atrium Event Centre, Stadium Road.

Organisers say those who want to participate in the show can register by sending ‘DANCE’ to the short code 55517 in Nigeria and 3030 in Ghana through their Glo lines, at the cost of N100 for Nigeria and 0.5GHc for Ghana.