TAKING Jamaican culture to the world. That is what dancer Latonya Style and her team at Dance Jamaica have been doing since 2006.

A former member of the Ashe creative dance troupe, she is one of the country’s in-demand teachers of Jamaican popular culture through dance.

“It first started out as a means of documenting and publicising the work of dancers here. I was really acting in an administrative way, using the Internet and social media such as MySpace and YouTube to get the word out about dance and dancers in Jamaica. We grew and then created a database of dance moves — The A-Z of Dance Moves, where persons all over the world could go on YouTube and learn dance moves. It was just my little way of sharing our dance with people all over the world,” she told Splash.

However, little did she know that that ‘little’ move would pay off in a big way.

In 2006, Latonya Style, whose given name is Latonya Dillon, got word of a summer camp in St Petersburg, Russia, which was teaching reggae/dancehall classes. She thought, ‘Why are Europeans teaching our culture and not us?’

Style was later contacted by a dissatisfied Russian who had attended the camp but was not pleased.

So, in July of that year she left Jamaica for Russia, on what she terms a cultural exchange. She was going there to share Jamaica with Russia and see what she could learn from them.

“We were going there not to teach, as we had no work permits, but to share our culture with Russia. We took everything, not just the music, but cheese trix, empty juice boxes to make the ball for dandy shandy, elastic bands to play Chinese skip and came up with a full package of theory and practical. And of course there was dance, all the dance moves through the eras. At the end of the week we had a battle among the participants to see who was the best… it was a success.”

This one-week exchange opened doors for Latonya Style and her dancers. By the following year, she was taking her workshops across Europe. These trips influenced her to take the package to Jamaica and expose the world to an authentic Jamaican cultural experience.

“I first had to move Dance Jamaica from being a hobby to a business. This involved creating a dance studio with mirrors, like the foreigners are used to. One of the big things was teaching the dancers I worked with how to teach. Yes, many can dance, it comes to them naturally, but were not able to share what it is they had inside…so that was a process..”

But she wanted her studio to be more than just a place to dance; it had to become a cultural centre. It offers the full cultural experience including patois and games.

“We also have a class called ‘run a boat’ where we expose our students to authentic Jamaican cuisine. And of course we take them to the streets for the weekly parties,” Style explained.

Presently, she attracts students from South Korea, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Israel, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Europe remains a large market.

Now in her 17th year as a performer, the Queen’s School past student noted that her travels have shown her that Jamaicans do not appreciate their impact on the world.

“We are just too laid-back. We don’t appreciate our own thing. The world is moving away with what we created… creating success stories with our thing and we are complacent.”

Latonya Style is quick to mention that she does not do this alone. The Dance Jamaica umbrella covers some of the popular street dancers such as Cullo Cullo, Black Eagle, Overload Skankaz, Boysie Roses, Shelly Belly, Stacia Fya and Kimiko.