Check Out the Dance Craze of the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup!
SANDTON, South Africa – Tucked beneath a baseball cap, eyes buried behind giant sunglasses, the man who has made his country dance laughs in the Thursday morning chill.
"This Diski Dance has taken over my life," Wendy Ramokgadi said.
And in the days before the great soccer tournament begins, a push has been made to get all South Africans to learn the dance named after the slang word children use in the country's poor townships for soccer ball. Entire schools have Diski Dance assemblies...
The dance then is simple, he says. Just imagine you are playing with a soccer ball.
First you do the "teka," which means juggling the diski in place. Then you pretend to kick it up in the air and look upward and tip it with the side of your head, shaking your head two times to the left and two times to the right and repeating the action four times.
After that, you bend down and let the ball rest on your neck, sliding back four times while keeping the ball in place. Then slowly pull yourself up but leave your head down, creating the sense that the ball is dropping forward off the front of your skull. When it falls, plant your foot on top of it. Cross your leg over the imaginary ball four times, then lean back and "shayi" or pretend to kick it.
As the ball is heading toward its invisible goal, scream "Halakashi!" – or "Goal!" – in the street dialect he and his friends shouted as kids. "You have to yell to be able to feel it," he said. So far South Africa has. And he is sure it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world will feel it too, bringing alive his Diski Dance.
Learn How To Do the Diski
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fML326GXJPY...
"This Diski Dance has taken over my life," Wendy Ramokgadi said.
And in the days before the great soccer tournament begins, a push has been made to get all South Africans to learn the dance named after the slang word children use in the country's poor townships for soccer ball. Entire schools have Diski Dance assemblies...
The dance then is simple, he says. Just imagine you are playing with a soccer ball.
First you do the "teka," which means juggling the diski in place. Then you pretend to kick it up in the air and look upward and tip it with the side of your head, shaking your head two times to the left and two times to the right and repeating the action four times.
After that, you bend down and let the ball rest on your neck, sliding back four times while keeping the ball in place. Then slowly pull yourself up but leave your head down, creating the sense that the ball is dropping forward off the front of your skull. When it falls, plant your foot on top of it. Cross your leg over the imaginary ball four times, then lean back and "shayi" or pretend to kick it.
As the ball is heading toward its invisible goal, scream "Halakashi!" – or "Goal!" – in the street dialect he and his friends shouted as kids. "You have to yell to be able to feel it," he said. So far South Africa has. And he is sure it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world will feel it too, bringing alive his Diski Dance.
Learn How To Do the Diski
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fML326GXJPY...
