Jessica Guerrucci—Reporter
Rose Mwambayi, a junior, a management and psychology major, is sharing her passion for dancing with the world.
Mwambayi transferred to Southern for her second year of college from American International College in Massachusetts. Since arriving at Southern, she has been a jumper on the track team and is currently dance coordinator of the African Student Association.
Outside of her life at Southern, Mwambayi said she is a public figure on Instagram, where she posts videos of her dancing. She now has nearly 70,000 followers, which she mostly gained after one of her videos went viral in March 2018.
“I upload Afrobeat dance, I upload advice, mostly my videos are just expressing happiness through dancing and just getting people in the mood,” said Mwambayi.
She said she was able to gain so many followers because her viewers like her smile and the vibes that she puts out when she’s in front of the camera.
Despite the amount of work that goes into each video, she said she does most of it herself with occasional help from her friends.
“It’s a lot because the amount of takes you have to do,” said Mwambayi. “Gladly, I do it all on my iPhone and then I just upload it to my MacBook and I just put music over it.”
Mwambayi said she stopped competing in track to pursue her passion for dancing and to brand herself on Instagram instead. She said she is not necessarily a better dancer than a jumper, but in the future she sees dancing playing a bigger role in her life.
“I had a passion for track, I loved track, I loved jumping. I was a jumper, but it was like, ‘What was going to benefit me more in the future?’ I know I was doing good with jumping in track, but I wasn’t at the level that would take me to the Olympics or anything like that,” said Mwambayi.
Once she graduates, Mwambayi said she wants to use her degree in management to help pursue her dancing career. She said she hopes to be known as “yourfavafrican,” which is also the name of her Instagram account.
“In the future, I hope to open dance studios, I hope to be a big dance coordinator. I hope to coordinate backstage dancers for people, start my own management company for dancing, and just become a public figure,” said Mwambayi.
As dance coordinator for the African Student Association, Mwambayi said she gets to show Afrobeat to the world. She said they perform at several schools across Connecticut including Yale, University of Connecticut, and Western Connecticut State University.
Using her skills that she learned as coordinator, Mwambayi said she is going on tour to teach dance classes. She said she will be going to Maryland, New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia.
“It’s my first dance class, it’s my first tour, so it’s kind of nerve-racking, but at the same time I know I’m very good at dance,” said Mwambayi. “I know since I do teach here at Southern, I think I’ll be fine teaching a big group of people.”
Photo Credit: Jessica Guerrucci