EVERYBODY DANCE NOW feat. SAEA BANYANA

Over the weekend I made the trek down to Melbourne town for the weekend with my family to support our baby sister, sister in-law and girlfriends from ALL GIRL AFRICAN DANCE GROUP  SAEA BANYANA who are appearing on the new reality series on Network 10 called "EVERYBODY DANCE NOW".

TEAM SB - BROTHER MARV, TRACY, TT, MEECIE, LEXUS & ANGEL

When I heard the girls made it onto EVERYBODY DANCE NOW I was ecstatic for more reasons than one. The main reason obviously being because I am a HUGE fan of SAEA BANYANA and I know how hard they work and now they finally get the chance to showcase cultural dance to Australia representing various parts of Africa.  They are also representing strong independent WOMAN.

LISA (BIZNIZ BANYANA) EDEN (BOUNCY BANYANA) TIANA (BOSSY BANYANA)
RITA (BOLD BANYANA) MAXINE  (BABY BANYANA)

The other reasons being that other talented dancers like Beat The Streets for example get their time to shine on national television and the dance mentors on the show are actually of African American descent.

BEAT THE STREETS

I am so happy an Australian production company chose people of colour to mentor on EVERYBODY DANCE NOW. For years I have been preaching that we need to embrace coloured people on TV in Australia as we live in such a multi-cultural country, and it is not represented in mainstream media, so props to Freemantle Media.

DANCE MASTERS JASON DERULO & KELLY ROWLAND

SARAH MURDOCH & JAZZ (TEAM SB)

At first I did not understand why they chose Sarah Murdoch to host a dance show, but after seeing her work and seeing her passion for dance on some of the promo videos I now understand why.  Sarah Murdoch is one of the nicest people, I have met. She is so pretty and just a really lovely woman and I got the chance to tell her that.

EVERYBODY DANCE NOW is great for showcasing the many talented Australian dancers & it is a way to let everyone see the many different styles of dance out there.

The format however, has been debatable.

From my understanding (insiders info) there are 24 teams that need to compete in the televised heats to get into the quarter finals.

JASON & KELLY ON SET

Dance Masters Kelly Rowland and Jason Derulo have already chosen who they would like on their teams, so on the night of the show 
they simply choose a team to compete.

It is meant to be a game of strategy.

Each week 8 teams / dancers with various styles compete in Dance Duels and at the end four teams battle it out in a final Duel to move forward into the Quarter final, two of which are chosen to go through.

The audience holds all the power and they vote on which team wins each Duel including the final 30 sec duel which is the decider.

The Dance Masters have to plead their case and reason why the audience should vote for their team.

The heats are pre-recorded and the finals are live.  It is filmed in Melbourne.

Once it goes LIVE Australia gets to cast their VOTE.

The are a few issues I have with EVERYBODY DANCE NOW, the first one being the really bad camera angles and editing.

After watching it LIVE in the studio, what I expected to see on Television and what they actually aired was very different.

Also the tallying of the votes comes across too quick on TV, alot of people are confused.

My other gripe was the waiting time.

On arrival we were escorted as VIP'S into a warehouse and were lead to a section where there chairs in a semi-circle, we thought cool VIP treatment, but then the waiting began.

We sat for 9 hours the first day of filming and 6 hours the second day! Phew I had back ache! It was way too long to keep an audience waiting.  

I felt bad for the people who did not have a seat.

BUT it was absolutely worth it to see our girls do their thing on stage and also the other acts 

On the first day of filming, we were also treated to a live performance by "Jason Derulo", who also proceeded to sing his name for us.

That was cool.

TEAM SB WAITING WAITING

"THE WARM UP GUY" Dave Eastgate deserves an honourable mention here for his tireless efforts at keeping the crowd entertained and amped to cheer and scream on cue.

Dave Eastgate is the funniest guy ever. He had us in stitches with his jokes and funny antics which included throwing himself around the stage and exposing his beer belly. Dave deserves some kind of award.

He is at almost every recording of shows of this type. He gets the jobs.

"THE WARM UP GUY" DAVE EASTGATE

Check out our SAEA BANYANAS in their heat, they nailed their performance and the audience voted in their favour.  Not only are they $10,000 richer, they are on their way to winning the grand prize of $250,000.00 and Australia gets to see their talent and beauty.

I am looking forward to catching the girls in their quarter final performance, in a couple of weeks.  As Kelly Rowland said they are "full of surprises" and you can guarantee they will be "bringing the heat".

You can follow them on twitter & facebook  & instagram and use the hashtags #BANYANAFIDE #TEAMSB #SAEABANYANA #TEAMKELLY

Feel free to VOTE for our SAEA BANYANA girls & get BANYANAFIDE Australia! :)

DANCING SETS THE SPIRIT FREE! :)