Dancing In The Wind

  Picture the scene. I am stood in a tarpaulin tent with rain lashing down outside and the hurricane winds lifting the sides up and letting the hellish conditions pollute my temporary dance studio. One child is attempting to hug the stranded, flea-ridden mut that is known as 'Dead Dog'. Another is stamping against the temporary flooring letting in a flood of muddy water. The rest are looking towards their councillor for inspiration. The councillor in question was me, and I was trying to conjure up a dance routine that would suitably pass as a 'punk-rock' edition of Hakuna Matata.

  Welcome to camp.

'Team Jack' about to perform the
Circle of Life set with my
'choreography'

  This was my last group out of four, having already worked me and three other groups of 11 year olds through Circle of Life (Jazz style), Just Can't Wait To Be King (Hip-Hop) and Can You Feel The Love Tonight (Opera). In case you hadn't already noticed we were preparing for a production of The Lion King, which would uniquely incorporate a variety of dancing styles. In charge of this was a man with only two years of dancing experience in a 'street dance' group called 'Dance Dudes' between the ages of 8 and 10. If we add this to years of drunken nightclub dancing then we have quite a resumé - but that didn't quite suffice to 35 eleven year old Argentinean kids.

  I was one of six councillors working on the Lights, Camera, Action English immersion camp with a theme of musicals. As you can imagine I wasn't necessarily picked for my suitability to the theme, but pretty much at random in the line of poor sods that had to spend 3/4 days entertaining a group of school-kids. In this case it was an epic four-dayer, the longest camp provided by the company, and with a theme that had never been done before. If being called for a camp was like jury-duty, I'd been handed a complicated fraud case.

  I returned to Mercedes and The Borough - where I had spent 10 days of training at the start of my time in Argentina - directly off the back of a heavy weekend of boozing in Buenos Aires, and so started the experience in an already fractured state. If there was ever an opposite way to recover from a heavy weekend it would be to spend four 13 hour days with a large group of kids in what can only be described as a field. But the show had to go on (oi oi) and from Monday morning onwards I assumed the role of Jack the Councillor - set with a 'passion' and an even looser 'talent' for musicals.

A glorious day at The Borough
as the kids prepare for a
Grease Lightening Obstacle Course
(Spoiler Alert - It ended in tears)

  The only way to conquer the camp was to embrace it, and that's exactly what we did. Being a councillor involved a spontaneous flash-mob solo performance of Breaking Free (HSM) in the middle of lunch as well as a dance battle with two fellow councillors for the hand of the only female councillor, Lucy, in a fictional love triangle that hooked the kids like crack.

  Another memorable moment was the campfire which was encompassed in more tornado like winds that ensured that my performance of 'repeat-after-me' campfire song Boom Chicka Boom (my debut around the flames) required me to use every layer of my voicebox in order to be heard and followed. This was followed by me and my mate Ed attempting to tell a scary story (again improvised on the spot) whilst the teachers constantly monitored our levels of terror by whispering 'too scary' and 'not scary enough' - which was 'helpful'. The abducted child from camp soon became a joyful girl that was reunited with her lost grandmother who had previously been deployed as a scary woman. Kids.

  Along with the production of The Lion King, we organised two more musicals which were the grand finale on the last night. My role was to direct 'a 2016 version' of Cinderella along with fellow councillor Jack. We took on the role to the point of writing the script, holding casting auditions, further choreographing and directing the thing as JackSquared. Whilst the girls of the group saw this as their chances to shine, the guys were more interested in throwing around Cinderella's shoe and fighting for her attention in a WWE-friendly manner..

  The kids were tough to handle but they weren't half a bunch of characters. By the end of camp I had at least 16 individually personal hand-shakes with a variety of students, which made first greeting at breakfast quite the memory test. I was well and truly 'down with the kids' (partly because mentally I still am one) and we formed some pretty good bonds including some strong bromances that will apparently 'never be forgotten' (their words). This richness in character was epitomised by one of the crazier kids acting as conductor for the rest of his peers for the drop of 'Turn Down For What' (The Anthem of the Youth) at the disco, which had me crying with laughter (see video below).

  As the kids left, I was thrust with a sea of white papers and demands for my Instagram username and (weirdly) my autograph by the kids, so if you want to pick up one of those valuable items I suppose they'll be on EBay already at an inflated price. They were 11 years old but you gotta be made of steel not to feel slightly touched by the number of compliments and 'I'll miss you' that I received at the end of the camp.

 It may have been a pain in the arse telling Augusto and Pedro to stop throwing hay in eachothers' eyes. It may have been a pain in the arse asking Facundo to stop hugging Dead Dog. It may have been a pain in the arse telling Angel to stay out of the flood of mud. Yet at the end of the day they were great kids and the experience clearly meant the world to them and that makes it worth it (I think..). This won't be my last camp but I'm sure it'll be the one I remember at the end of this whole experience, along with the fact that if Diversity have a vacancy, there's only one man they should call....

Shack the Councillor.

Thanks for reading.

Me with my new dance troop - 'Dance Dudes Reformed'