Me and my job: Faith in future of young dancers

Bev Adair-Beets - devoted to dance. PHOTO / JOHN BORREN

Name: Bev Adair-Beets
Job Title: Street Dance NZ: Executive director; Homegrown Music Festival production manager; Levites manager; Jacob Nansen; music director Stan Walker / Levites; Erakah: independent music artist; songwriter, Pacific Award-winner (best female); NZ Child and Youth advocate; executive consultant - specialising in events /artist management
Company: Street Dance NZ /Bev Adair Management

What does your job involve?

A lot of people just see the competitions, music awards, shows and all the front end of of what I do. But everything that I do is about the development of young people and helping them reach their dreams.

I am passionate about building pathways that are strong and secure for young people to stand on, to develop into the amazing people they were born to be. Street Dance NZ, to me, has always been about our young people and their future ... Street Dance/Hip-Hop is a great vehicle to reach our young people and equip them to do life well.

As executive director, I have an incredible team and amazing managers. We are the official, exclusive NZ Hip-Hop International USA affiliate.

Any dance crew that wants to compete at the International World Hip-Hop Championship has to come through our competition. World rankings are required to maintain credibility in the world of hip-hop.

Dance is a great vehicle to reach our young people and their families.
We have as a nation always "punched above our weight".

All of New Zealand's 13 crews this year made it through to the semifinals and we advanced five crews to the finals. Only New Zealand, Canada and Japan out of the 43 represented nations had that many at finals.

I am so excited to say that we are having our very first HHI Street Dance NZ Waikato/BOP regional competition in Tauranga, [on] March 22.

In my role as Homegrown production manager, I am responsible for the 62 bands, eight stages and collating all relevant production information.

What's the most challenging aspect of your role?

Finding funding and resources to keep doing this. Youth development needs more funding. We want to develop these dance education programmes in all of the regions and communities that do not have the funding to do it themselves.

Our desire [is] to take teams of New Zealand's leading choreographers and dance educators to the regions to help build the dancers within their own region.

It's about growing our young people where they are.

We don't want them to think they have to go to Auckland or out of their area to get world-class tuition.

Getting the right leaders, in each community, who have a heart for these young people and help to ignite the potential in our community ... we need to keep evolving and looking for new initiatives to grow our foundation stronger for our dancers and our community.