Cuthbert Tura Arutura is a Black Lives Matter campaigner who teaches Irish dance from home.YouTube/small codes
A Black Lives Matter campaigner who is teaching Irish dance online says there are similarities between the dance of Zimbabwe and Sean Nós.
Cuthbert Tura Arutura, who was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in Ballygowan, Co Down, has been spending the lockdown teaching Irish dance classes online.
Aratura is an Irish language campaigner and a BLM activist, who addressed a BLM rally at Custom House Square in Belfast in June last year.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Arutura taught classes face-to-face but had to turn to an online platform since the lockdown.
He says that the dance from his native country and Sean Nós are very similar. (Sean Nós is a minimalist form of Irish dance traditionally danced in people’s homes.)
"People will find it very exciting that Ireland and southern Africa has this connection of music and rhythm and dance,” he said, according to BelfastLive.
"Sean nos is the mother and father of all dances in Ireland."
A Zimbabwean man living in Co Down is using lockdown to teach Irish dance online.
Cuthbert Tura Arutura says there are musical and rhythmical connections between Sean-nos dancing and traditional southern African dances. @PA video by @niallcarsonpa pic.twitter.com/65wVHV3No6
— David Young (@DavidYoungPA) February 22, 2021
"What interested me in sean nós dancing was the rawness, the energy and naturalness of the dance and how it really had this primitive essence and energy and power."
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He says dance is a great skill to learn and a fun way to stay healthy during lockdown.
"It is so good for mental health, for physical health, it is good for your heart, it is good for your lungs, it is good for everything," he said.
"Once lockdown is removed you can show people the new skill that you have learned.
"Because of its transcendent nature, people really want to learn sean nós."