Krista Henry, Staff Reporter
Dancers Dweeble and Shotta Paws of Ambush Dem. - Contributed
Taking over popular Internet site youtube.com, Brooklyn dance group Ambush Dem is bringing its own style to popular Jamaican moves.
Youtube has become one of the quickest and easiest ways, besides visiting the dances, to learn the latest dance moves. On the site dancers Ambush Dem give millions of viewers dance lessons on Nuh Linga, Tek Weh Yuhself among other dances.
Consisting of the Jamaican-born Damion 'Dweeble' Reid and the Brooklyn-born Talashia 'Shotta Paws' Jackson, while the duo has yet to become popular in the clubs, they have taken youtube by storm.
Dance lesson
The Brooklyn based group has countless home-made dancing videos on the site including the remake of singer MIA Boyz video, the Tek Weh Yuself video which has 167,693 hits and the video that brought the duo to THE STAR's attention Dance Lesson: Nuh Linga. The Nuh Linga video has 26,480 hits and shows Dweeble giving detailed step by step lessons on how to do the dances. All of their videos have numerous remarks from admirers and persons grateful to learn the new moves.
The group started when Shotta Paws linked Dweeble after seeing his videos on youtube and since then the two have been dancing together in clubs, getting bookings and gaining popularity on youtube.
"I was doing the youtube thing for a while not trying to prove anything.The first video came about from a song a Canadian artiste 'One Dance' had and since then it just grew, a lot of people watch it from all around the world. The Tek Weh Yuhself video followed and that set us a part from other dancers, everyone on youtube wasn't dancing it properly so we did it to show them how it was done, but in our own style," Dweeble explained.
The duo also creates its own dances and looks up to Jamaican dancers - Ravers Clavers among others. According to Dweeble, in Brooklyn Jamaican dancing is extremely popular, with persons learning how to dance to songs from the countless DVDs distributed such as those from Passa Passa and Dutty Fridaze. Currently, according to Dweeble, dance group MOB's dance routines are the most popular in Brooklyn.
Full-time
While not full-time dancers, for Dweeble he wants to one day become a dancer as long as he can get paid to do so. However, he believes that Jamaican dancing has gained a certain amount of respect in recent times, "I think it's good Jamaican dancers have stepped up, they have become more popular than Jamaican artistes, they are looked on as celebrities in their own right now. I think Ding Dong deserves a lot of props for that he really took dancing mainstream."
The duo gives the dances their own flair but believes they are on par with any Jamaican dance group.
Do
you have a problem? Is something bothering
you? Write to