You might know Zimbabwean Performing Artist John Cole from favourites like Tytan and Ammara Brown’s Mukoko or Cynthia Mare’s playful single Ngoro or his on-going movement Dance with John Cole. The Multi-award winning Choreographer has been up to something for quite a while that might change the course of his career. Named – Colour of Dance it’s an EP that sees him dabble with not only Music but, Visuals and Dance.
“No more dancing to other people’s music! It’s my Music, my Dances, my Video” said John
The project itself is well over four years old and launched just last week with a single titled Skoro Skoro featuring Lee McHoney. Art of Dance, John admitted pushed him out of his comfort zone;
“People don’t realise that to succeed you need to look beyond the now, I’ve had this concept and worked on it for nearly 5 years. It wasn’t easy, it was hard, singing is not my thing…can you imagine me singing? It took me a while to verbalise the concept…It was difficult to express what I wanted the vocalists to sound like”, admited John.
The father of two did not hide his intentions, he was here for all of it, to prove the value of Dance in Creative and corporate spaces.
“I’ve always hated how Dance is overlooked as an Art, they know we are good at what we do but a lot of Artists think what we do is easy. Colour of Dance is here to stick it to the corporates and the musicians and say we can still do all these things. We want to prove that we can do it right,” enthused John.
We needed a bit of balance, was this the end of us seeing ‘starring’ John Cole in music videos?
“Honestly, I’m tired of choreographing Mukoko and Body flex, I mean it’s great but I need people to see the value of our work. Of course, when a project is thrown to you, we still want to generate the je ne sais quoi type of dance but Colour of Dance gives me leverage to tour the world with my dancers” John said.
Apart from changing the face and value of Dance, John Cole is convinced his project will bring people together
“Dance can break racism, and I believe Colour of Dance will bring people together…when Music goes on and someone is dancing real cool it’s not about where they are from. Your first instinct is “that’s some cool shit though, teach me!”“
Colour of Dance is a part of John Cole’s Evolution, we like that it encompasses multiple genres from Rhumba, House, R&B, Dancehall with Artists such as Ammara Brown, Lee McHoney, Andy Muridzo and Trevor D with Andy Cutta to mention a few of the names John dropped as part of the project. Of course, this comes as no surprise given his track record; he’s been deliberate by associating with notable artists.
“I only work on videos which make sense, hits that make 20k views or more, 1 million views, call it God’s plan” chuckled John.
We are definitely here for this and are looking forward to sampling what we’ve now termed a Visual Dance Album due in June. Meanwhile, we’ll be reviewing Skoro skoro the single in a few so look out for it and listen to the song here.
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