Local is the youngest chosen for the trip
Hip-hop dancer Josiah Ochoa was only 10 years old when he
decided he wanted to dance.
Local is the youngest chosen for the trip
Hip-hop dancer Josiah Ochoa was only 10 years old when he decided he wanted to dance.
“Around 10 years old, I saw all these dancing movies and how great it was,” Josiah said.
In the two short years since his dance career began, he has gone to a whole new level of performance. Besides winning various competitions, including coming in second place in the International Presentation of Performers talent competition in Las Vegas in 2007, Josiah will now be touring Russia for an Annual Drug & Alcohol Awareness hip-hop concert.
Josiah, along with 10 other artists, will tour through three cities and hold seven performances from June 23 to June 30.
“I’m so excited for him. It’s going to be a great experience” said Josiah’s mother, Rebecca Ochoa. “He will mature not only in his dance, but as a young man.”
The tour is meant to cast American hip-hop in a positive light, to let the kids know that they can live for the art and not have to die for it. The group of hip-hop artists will meet with 20 drug and alcohol centers that reach teens in Irkutsk, Angard, and Bratsk.
The tour performers will provide information on drug and alcohol use as well as encourage kids to get tested for drug-related illnesses while they are there (up to 30 percent of all teens users are HIV positive in Irkutsk according to tour organizer Keita Ward). In fact, a young boy living in Irkutsk will have a life expectancy of only 53 years and the tour organizers hope to help extend that.
Josiah will be the only person on the tour under the age of 21. In fact, he wasn’t even going to be considered to audition because of his age. His father was able to persuade Ward that Josiah had talent that could not be ignored.
“When he auditioned for the tour I was sure I was going to tell him no because he is only 12,” wrote Ward in an e-mail. “However after watching the depth of emotions when he dances, and the way he interprets music astounded me, and I could not pass him by.”
Both Josiah’s mother and dance teacher said they are proud of him.
“He’s such a great boy, I get tears to my eyes. He’s amazing” said Isabella Torres, Josiah’s dance instructor and the owner of Waves of Illusion in Hollister. “This is just the beginning of his giant career. I’m proud of him and I know he is going to accomplish much more.”
Torres has worked with Josiah on what she has dubbed Latizmo dance – a mix of hip-hop with a Latin flare.
Some of the participants of the tour include dancers from the Broadway show “Stomp” and one of the drummers of the Black Eyed Peas.
“I expect it to be a great feeling,” Josiah said. “I’ve done Las Vegas and expect reaction and surprise but at the same time not nervousness”
