As we draw close to the 4th annual Walking & Dancing Out of Cancer 2-day event taking place on 26 and 27 October 2024 at Soweto Theatre, hosted by Nomsa Manaka Dance Beat, the excitement is mounting as we reveal the artist line-up performing at this year’s event.
This annual unique purpose driven event, aims to celebrate the many brave cancer survivors in South Africa, regardless of age, gender or diagnosed cancer. “Cancer is a debilitating and isolating disease which gravely threatens your existence as a person and can erode your dignity. As an Ovarian Cancer survivor, I have literally fought for my life, to beat the odds of survival and have taken the opportunity to tell my story uniquely, in art-form, through dance and music.” says Nomsa Manaka,Founder and Pioneer of Nomsa Manaka Dance Beat – a social entity developed to provide children in the townships a safe recreational facility to express their creativity through dance. Through the Nomsa Manaka Dance Beat platform, Manaka is telling her story of how she has survived the excruciating journey of cancer, where she almost gave up on her artistic dream of teaching dance to the children she mentors across Soweto. Instead, and encouraged by her son Mac Makomele , she is using the platform to encourage others that there is no dream too big to achieve regardless of your circumstances.
“The 2024 Walking & Dancing Out Of Cancer annual event, promises to be much bigger than previous years as we have secured a 5000 per day, venue capacity. This is reflective of the great support this initiative has attracted over the years from corporates, NGOs, media and entertainment stakeholders as well as ordinary South Africans from all walks of life who have been touched and or impacted by the scourge of cancer, in one way or another. But support can never be enough as, every minute, a cancer diagnosis is given to someone, somewhere in the world. Child cancers in particular, are often not detected early enough and neither are they spoken about widely enough. It is also for that reason that we have chosen the Childhood Cancer Foundation SA (CHOC) to be the main beneficiary of this initiative, but we still need more help.”
