SOWETO STREET BEAT

Soweto Street Beat is a South African world dance theater company based in Atlanta, Georgia and Soweto, South Africa.   After Apartheid, we became the first professional South African dance company to perform at venues and festivals in South Africa, Europe and America.  SSB is the only professional South African dance and music company in the United States.  We began our work in 1989 in Soweto and relocated to Atlanta in 1992. Incorporated in 1993, we became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1994. 

Our mission is to teach audiences of all ages and cultural backgrounds, especially at risk youth, about the cultural arts and history of South Africa.  We began SSB to target at risk youth surrounded by crime and poverty in Soweto Township of Johannesburg, South Africa. These young men were taught to become professional dancers, cultural ambassadors. They learned methods of channeling their energies that were building up throughout years of Apartheid into positive, creative activities.   Today, we continue this teaching to South African youth, bringing them to America to study dance and to get valuable academic experience not readily available in South Africa.

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SSB provides South African dance and music productions such as Zulu Kingdom and Drum Kingdom for children and adults at Festivals, Events, K-12 Schools, Colleges, Universities and Corporate Events.  Performances focus on the history of the Zulu Nation, and our unique dance and music styles that stem from South African ethnic groups Zulu, Swazi, Venda, Shangaan, Bushmen, Sotho, and Xhosa.  During our history we have performed for international audiences of over 10 million people including 800,000 (K – 12) students in USA schools.

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Executive Director, Peter Ngcobo, and Artistic Director, Isabelle Doll Ngcobo, have fifty years combined experience in African Dance performance and instruction. 

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