Belfast Mela: The diverse young Craigavon man building a brighter future for Northern Ireland dancers

Azeem Alahi is a young man on a mission to build a brighter future for dancers.

Just four months ago, the actor, model and dancer from Co Armagh established Dance United NI, a new collective of diverse young dancers living in Northern Ireland with influences of bhangra and Arabian music, all infused with dynamic hip-hop elements.

Dance United NI is the first dance agency in Northern Ireland, dedicated to revolutionising the dance and performance industry. Their aim is to provide dancers with professional opportunities in performances, TV, theatre and more.

READ MORE: Thousands enjoy Belfast Mela Carnival and show support for cultural diversity

READ MORE: How moving to NI inspired Texas woman's love of Bollywood

Since its inception in April of this year, Dance United NI has collaborated with household names like Jennifer Rooney and Des Kennedy, esteemed West End directors, and have provided over 50 dancers with professional opportunities.

Now Azeem, 21 and from Craigavon, and his dance team are excited to be making their debut at Belfast Mela this year. The annual multicultural festival celebrating our cultural diversity, which attracted more than 60,000 people last year once, takes place over nine days, culminating with Mela Day at Botanic Gardens this Sunday, 25th August.

Get set to see Botanic Gardens transformed into one massive global party bringing you the best in music, dance, food and art to celebrate the best of culture and communities at Belfast’s most loved family festival.

He spoke to Belfast Live ahead of Mela Day about how he fell into dancing: "A girl called Pamela Cassells who runs her School of Performance. in Portadown first spotted me at my primary school where she was teaching hip-hop.

"I had never danced before or been trained professionally but I was taught like everyone else and really enjoyed it. I would just lose myself in the music and was such a firecracker with so much energy," he added.

Fast forward to over ten years later and Azeem now has more than a decade of experience as a competitive dancer, specialising in hip-hop/street dance, commercial, and Bollywood dance. He has also achieved several national titles, including All-Ireland Champion in hip-hop and Ulster Champion in dance and fitness.

For Azeem, his mission with Dance United NI is to advocate for dancers' rights, ensuring fair pay and fair treatment in an industry where young performers are often exploited.

He explained: "The dance world here in Northern Ireland is really underdeveloped, at a low level and very unregulated. The amount of times myself and friends have been asked to do things for free in a professional environment and at ticketed events because people in this country know that they can ask that.

"I pitched to so many agencies that this needs to change and instead we need to hire dancers and specialise in getting them jobs. That all comes down to the lack of governing bodies here and agencies that specialise in this compared to other cities like London. Birmingham and Manchester.

"I decided to take it on myself to stand up for these dancers and take these people who want to pursue it professionally in this country under my wing because no-one else would and I've only seen reward after reward since then."

This year's Belfast Mela Day will include an onstage performance by Dance United for the first time as Azeem explained: "We're doing a whole dance fusion routine with lots of hip-hop and Bollywood. What I wanted to do was represent as many different cultures as possible so everyone feels represented and to also give people a big culture punch in the face.

"We'll be performing on the World Stage just before the finale which I'm really chuffed about. We also performed at last Saturday's Mela Carnival parade for the first time. It was great to see such a large crowd out on the streets enjoying all the colours and cultures on show so it's made me super excited for Sunday afternoon."

Full programme for Mela Day including a map for Botanic Gardens is available at www.belfastmela.org.uk. To find out more about Dance United NI and future auditions you can follow their social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our What's On newsletter.