Dancer Gana Gana

Gana Gana was born Damian Young on July 3, 1981 in Port Antonio, Jamaica, where he was also raised and attended school.

After leaving high school, Damian worked in fashion retail and as a selector for the West Star sound system in Portland. He always had a love for music and dance as well as a tremendous talent for dancing, which eventually led to Damian starting a professional career as a dancer and choreographer in 2001.

Damian, who is known by his alias Gana since 1993, a name that stuck to him after a friend made a joke claiming Damian fell off a cane truck by the same name. In his professional career Gana has choreographed fashion shows and performed at cultural festivals, food fairs, stage shows such as Saddle to the East and Bling Dawg Summer Jam as well as at various resorts and hotels island wide.

Teaching a variety of dance classes, ranging from hip hop to reggae and cultural dance forms, has always been part of Gana's career and he has taught many dance groups at primary as well as high schools. Within this capacity, he has arranged and choreographed performance pieces and fashion shows and prepared groups for competitions. As dance teacher and choreographer at the Boundbrook Primary School, Gana led the dance group to success at the JCDC (Jamaican Cultural Development Commission) competition in 2003, where the group won the gold medal in the Portland Parish competition and silver at the National level.

Gana himself has been successful, winning awards in the JCDC competitions in 2003, taking home 1st place in the Men's individual category in Portland and 3rd place in the National finals. With his dance group, the West Portland Cultural Dance Group, he placed 3rd in the Portland parish finals. At the Festival Dance competition in Kingston the group was also successful again winning 1st place in the class 7 group category.

His name has of course also a place in the dancehall with frequent appearances in TV commercials and music videos, such as Mr Vegas' Tamale. Gana's outstanding talent allows him to display and perfect any style of dancing and perform at festivals, stage shows, music videos and street dances alike and it definitely puts him on top in his field. He has toured and performed in a variety of countries such as Japan and Italy but continues to make his name and leave his mark in his native Jamaica.

In the future Gana would like to open his own dance school and of course continue to create popular dance moves, and continuously perfect his art, taking himself and Jamaican dancing to the next level.

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