The pounding drums get louder and faster, and the floor begins to vibrate. Everyone starts to hop. There’s a lot of bouncing, bounding and bending. Arms go up, bodies go down sweeping the floor, reaching to the ceiling. Once the big dips and leg extensions are mastered, arms are added. Outstretched, loose, embracing.

This is a dance that needs the entire body. It isn’t necessarily graceful or refined but instead powerful and energetic. It uses every muscle and bone. Not just to keep a beat, but to be the beat, to be one with the music.

It’s no surprise that a few minutes in, everyone is sweating, happy to take a water break. It’s an impressive workout and yet everyone is smiling. This is the kind of dance where the more you give and the crazier the movements, the better it looks and feels. Students grin when they perfect a step, smile when they recognise the introduction of a favourite move or laugh when they mess up a sequence entirely. It certainly helps that instructor Reintje Callebaut’s most commonly repeated advice is: “Smile!”

“I rush here from work, complaining in the car about deadlines and co-workers,” says Tinne Bros, 29. “But after class I have completely forgotten about anything that was upsetting me. I’m happy. It changes from negative to positive. I have really found my thing. It clears my mind.” It certainly makes sense to Callebaut. “Students forget to have fun sometimes,” she says. “They focus so hard that they lose the joy they’re supposed to have. A quick reminder to smile, and then they relax and usually do the move a lot better.”

She says that African dance is more natural to the body than it is to the head. “We use our head too much,” she says. “We think too much. I work to get people out of their heads and onto the dance floor.”

Another student, Lotte, 26, concurs. “In the beginning, it is very difficult to learn,” she says. “We’re taught as young girls to move our bodies in a defined, feminine way. The basis of African dance is very different. Initially, I felt funny, but now I get it. It is about getting really low, getting down, getting to your core and your roots. There is great power in this dance. It brings out your emotions. There is a real release. That is what is lovely; it comes from your inside.”

For Callebaut, African dance is more than a release; it is a language. “I have been to Africa many times, learned a number of dances and mixed them all up. Some people don’t like that, but I’m not African. I know that when I did a Susu dance in Benin, people there loved it. Because I was speaking the language of African dance.”

It seems that here in Belgium a few more people speak the same language.

Dance palace: De Ingang

Whether you want to swing, tap or tango, there’s one place that teaches nearly
every shimmy shimmy shake there is. Reintje Callebaut is one of the founders
of Danshuis De Ingang in Ghent. “We’re busy all day long with only dance.” The
self-professed “creative mind of a golden trio”, she works with Elze Bogaerts,
who she describes as the visionary, and Sven Schoukens, who has a handle on
the practical organisation. “Together,” she says, “our aim is to have a wide range
of world dances. It is our specialty.”

Schoukens, a non-dancer, says his goals are socially inclined. “Our name has
the word huis in it,” he says. “Not school, but house. That is because it isn’t
about competition, tests or performance. We’re a non-profit social organisation.
We want to do more than just organise dance classes. We want to turn people
on to the culture of a dance. Plus it’s a really nice atmosphere. We bring people
together.”

That they do: The house has 1,800 members, 25 teachers and 110 classes
a week. Starting from a small space near the Dampoort train station in Ghent,
they have since grown to a beautiful location with multiple dance rooms featuring
wooden floors, mirrored walls and a café.

www.de-ingang.be