DanceJa

Dawn Hook - Dancehall Rep in Holland

Added: 12/26/11

Tags: Holland Dancer Dancehall Teacher Dawn Hook Dance Till Dawn

Dance Jamaica takes this opportunity to recognise and introduce to you Dawn Hook. Get to know more about her accomplishments and her contribution to our dancehall culture:

All About Dawn:

Dawn Hook (Stage Name- Sabrina) was born in the mid 70’s and is originally from the Caribbean Island St. Kitts with Jamaican background.

When she was just a baby her mother (Ursula Powell), died in a car accident at age of 29, Dawn being in the car with her mother was fortunate to have lived to see another day. After a lot of stress in the family her father’s aunt took her in and loved her as if she was her own. In the early eighty’s her family moved to Holland for a “better” future.

Dawn fell in love with dancing at the age of 9, just by looking at the dances in video clips of artists like Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, MC Hammer and so on. Learning every move she saw in the video clips, making up her own dances, looking in to different dance-styles and teaching them to her school friends. At the age of 13 she won a Latin dance contest and performed with the Merengue Band Las Chicas Del Can.

In the late eighty’s she attended a Shabba Ranks concert where she only looked at the background dancers, right then and there she fell in love with dancehall music and knew she would become a dancehall dancer no matter what. She tried to attend every show in which artists would have their back up dancers in concert and she would go just to see the dancers. As the years past she worked on her moves in her room, driving her family mad, because back then they did not have “hip hop or dancehall” dancing schools in Holland.

At the age of 15 she got her first big break performing as a background dancer for Sasha who had a big controversial hit back then. After that performance she started to perform at all the popular venues in The Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Germany. As the years past she got the opportunity to work with various Jamaican dancehall artistes and dancers like: The first ever dancehall queen Carleen, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Elephant Man, Patra, Sasha (JA), General Levi (UK), King Lover and Mega D of RMXCRW (NL) just to name a few.

Dawn retired from dancing in 2003 after performing for 13 years on and off. However, she missed the dancing and started teaching. In her class she saw that the students did not know what dancehall dancing really was and saw that no one knew who Gerald “Bogle” Levy was. They didn’t even know that dancehall is a dance style, so she started her plans to open a dancehall dancing school in Holland. All the planning and research took her and her husband 3 years before they opened the dancing school/entertainment office by the name of Dance Till Dawn in 2006.

To promote the dancing school and dancehall dancing she held an audition for a demo group and called it the Dance Till Dawn Dancers. (DTD Dancers)

Her achievements with her company:

Best dance act 2006
Artist and dancers management
Instructor/teacher/development DTD dancers
Choreographer for African artist Dircy Sill
Dutch dancehall Queen contest 2010: first, second and third place was a DTD dancer
Dutch dancehall Queen contest 2011: first, second and fouth place was a DTD dancer
Support/Backup dancer for: Vybz Kartel, Busy Signal, Wayne Marshal, Demarco, Mr Vegas, Black Marshal, Ginjah, RDX
Various video clips:
The DTD Dancehall dancing tv show: directed by award winning Stephan Kaas
Movie Wine Gyal wine: *student made (Indie)
Tv show Zo Raymann: over 500 thousand viewers
Holland got talent 2011 (made it to the semi finals live shows) over 2 million viewers
Founder and right owner EU DHK contest (European dancehall King contest) with Kim Laqueen:
Head of management Works In Silence management (W.I.S. Management)
Joined partners with Kjumi records and Shocking Visualz films

Some plans for 2012:

Second Eu DHK Contest
Documentary/Movie ”Dawn on European Dancehall”
European workshop tour “History of dancehall and dancehall dancing”
Going back to interviewing dancehall dancers on www .dancetilldawn -ent .com

Shout Outs:

Dawn would like to acknowledge the following female dancers who worked hard with her. She stated “they have so much passion for dance and dancehall culture. And been doing this for more than 5 years I can talk for hours with them about dancehall culture without explaining anything”