Meet the young African dancers from Rihanna’s Instagram who are taking over social media
Rihanna's shout out is giving these kids the recognition they deserve.
Just days after her words caused Snapchat’s $800 million stock plummet, the Grammy winning superstar is receiving recognition from a group of young Nigerian dancers.
Never forget that Rihanna has the power to change your life for better or for worse.
Just days after her words caused Snapchat’s $800 million stock plummet, the Grammy winning superstar is receiving recognition from a group of young Nigerian dancers.
It all started when Apple Music announced that Rihanna had become the first female artist to reach 2 billion streams worldwide on their music platform.
In celebration, Rihanna shared a video to Instagram of a group of young African girls dancing to “Nowo” by DJ Spinall and Wizkid. The caption read, “when I found out that I was the first female artist to cross 2 billion worldwide streams on Apple Music! God is too lit!!!!”
The video so far has been liked over 2.7 million times. The group was also recently nominated for the Best Creative Social Enterprise Award from the African Creative Exhibition and Awards.
Naturally, everybody wanted to know who these vibrant and amazingly talented girls are— and the Huffington Post has delivered.
According to the outlet, the troupe of dancing machines otherwise known as the Dreamcatchers are actually from Lagon, Nigeria. Made up entirely of 10 children— seven girls and three boys— the group have been dancing together since November 2014.
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Their Instagram bio labels them as “street kids,” who have used dance as an opportunity to attend school and stay off the streets. Their 26-year-old instructor Seyi Oluyole makes it known that there is so much more to these kinds than just dance. Oluyole once told the BBC that she almost walked away from assisting them because they were ditching school. It was a very inspirational moment for them all.
In a post from September, their Instagram page detailed the length of sacrifice and love that Oluyole has poured into the talented group.
“There is a special person who took us off the street and takes care of us,” it reads. “She feeds us, sends us to school, buys us clothes and takes care of us even when we are sick. She is Aunty Seyi. And if we don’t eat, she won’t eat. If we are sick she will stay by us until we are well. She even teach us to dance. She is the helper God sent to us,” they wrote in acknowledgement of her birthday.
Following retweets by Rihanna, Diddy, and Naomi Campbell the dancing superstars have amassed more than 53,000 followers so far. The troupe even posted individual videos thanking each one for the mega stars for their reposts and help.
Rihanna then reposted a picture from their thank-you-note and encouraged them to keep going. “[Y]ou really brought a pure joy to our spirits just by seeing how happy you are when you dance! You personally made my day!” she wrote.
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Oluyole told Yahoo, “All the children work very hard for a better future and to get the recognition from Rihanna after all our hard work in the past four years is definitely a great thing. It just goes to show that we are doing something right and there is truly hope for the children. The shout-out from Rihanna is proof that being born in the ghetto/street/[a] poor home doesn’t mean we can’t achieve something good.”
