Dance Break, The East Africa Edit: Skillz Dance Fest 12-15 Nov 2025

Dance Break, The East Africa Edit: Skillz Dance Fest 12-15 Nov 2025

The Skillz Dance Fest (SDF) is an annual contemporary dance festival in

Kampala, Uganda, that gathers dancers from across East Africa. Celebrating styles like Breaking, Krump, Afro-House, and Hip Hop, SDF hosts events for both individual dancers and crews.

For nine years, the festival's mission has been to place East African dancers on the world map. Through showcases, performances, workshops, and tours, SDF has built a powerful regional network, opening channels for cultural exchange grounded in both local and international communities.

The recent 9th edition deepened this mission with a series of communal knowledge exchanges. These included visits to off-the-beaten-track locations in Kampala, such as an artist workshop retreat at Mutima Beach on the peninsula of Lake Nalubale. These sessions questioned themes of community and audience, aiming to build new, decentralized locations for sharing knowledge.

A unique strength of the festival is its vast network of young people from across the region. By gathering these artists intent on sharing their discipline and entrepreneurship, SDF shifts perceptions of what young people are capable of. It paves the way for a uniquely East African celebration of dance.

The Culture of Dance: Gesture and Innovation

At its heart, Hip Hop dance is movement as gesture, rooted in a history of resistance and innovation. ‘we can’t necessarily dance wrong, we can dance poorly’—(Schloss analysis of the Breakin Cipher quoted in Hip Hop Habitus, T.DeFrantz): the true imperative is to innovate. The battles at SDF gather dancers and watchful spectators alike in a purposefully energetic, creative space. This demonstrates why this powerful dance form continues to draw generations of young people, existing beyond commodity exchange.

Year after year, Skills Dance Fest hosts this communal experience of East African camaraderie and participation. The network continues to grow, connecting dancers from Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and now, through a new partnership with West Africa’s AfroBreak, fostering pan-African dance exchange.

The Battle: From Rooftop to Crown

The judging system for these battles respects this spirit of innovation. It assesses what may seem like spur-of-the-moment improvisation against a careful framework of artistic intentionality and skill.

This year, hosted at Wild Ones, the festival was laid out in purposeful phases that highlighted the importance of curation. It began on the rooftop with a classic hip-hop battle warm-up, drawing in the neighbourhood. Then, ceremonial drummers called the crowd down to the basement for the final battle of the top eight breakers and crews. The venue's open amphitheatre design, with its high scaffolding, blurred the line between dancers and spectators, making everyone part of the spectacle. After the winners were crowned, the dance floor opened, welcoming all to join.

Rasheeda Nalumoso

Live Traces Producing

Visit skillzeaconnect.wixsite.com @skillzdancefest