WHEN La Lucia resident Jemma van Breda received an exclusive invitation to take part in the World Choreography Awards (WCA), she needed no prompting. The 17-year-old who alongside local dancer, Emmitt Cawley won a staggering 15 gold medals at the World Championships of Performing Arts in Hollywood last year, was among three South Africans to receive an invite.The show is an annual show which celebrates creativity, diversity, innovation by recognising excellence in the art of media choreography.

Nancy Bianconi, the President and CEO of the NoHo (North Hollywood) Talent Agency sent the Crawford College La Lucia pupil a personal invitation to the awards ceremony which requires participants to email a video of a dance they’ve choreographed to the judges. Jemma not only filmed and edited the video on her cellphone but also composed the dance in under two weeks. The contemporary dance piece called Revolutions features 12 dancers from the area and was filmed in two locations in Durban.

“I’m passionate about dancing but I’ve fallen in love with choreography. I’m so excited and honoured that I can be part of the competition. It’s an incredible opportunity to showcase my passion on an international level. When I received the invite, it was about two weeks before the video needed to be sent, I phoned, WhatsApped and called so many people to try and make a plan for the competition.

“All of the dancers that responded were amazing and have worked so hard, their professional manner was just amazing. Choreography is something I think about all the time but it was hard trying to come up with a piece in such a short space of time. The idea was my own but I really wanted to create a piece that broke the limitations of dance. I filmed the dance on my cellphone but I also had help from local resident, Paul Railton to edit and put together,” she said.