You cannot talk about dance in Nigeria without mentioning Kafayat Oluwatoyin Shafau, popularly known by her stage name Kaffy.
Kaffy is a popular professional dancer and choreographer for music videos. She is also a fitness and dance instructor. She runs a dance school and holds a Guinness World Record. The list of this dance queen’s achievements goes on and on.
But did they come easy? No.
With success comes sacrifice, despite the fact that dancing started as a hobby for her, Kaffy has given up quite a few things to get to where she is today.
These are three of the things she gave up;
A PAINLESS BODY
In an interview with Vanguard, Kaffy once spoke about having to deal with constant pains to the extent of having to take “strong pain-killers”. Here’s what she said;
“I get tired sometimes. Like right now, my body aches. I wake up everyday with body aches. I take painkillers sometimes. And there are some pains that may require strong painkillers, especially those that might put me out of work the next day. I fight them specially with strong painkillers. But the regular muscle pains don’t just go, I always have them.”
A CONSERVATIVE LIFESTYLE
Kaffy was raised in a really conservative home. She had to convince her family to break away from that to pursue a career in dancing. Read an excerpt from an interview with Daily Trust.
“It was not easy at all, especially since I come from a conservative home. We hardly went out. To them dancing was what I did as a hobby at home. It took a while for my parents to understand that anything respectful could come out of it. They were afraid of the kind of security that career would provide me.”
FINISHING HER DEGREE PROGRAMME
To focus on her career, Kaffy had to give up her degree programme. Here’s what she said.
“I had to give up finishing my degree programme. That did not mean I stopped getting education because I was taking online courses. It was not as if I was not intelligent to go on with my studies but I had to let it go to focus on my career. The education I had at that moment was enough to pull me through my career choice at that point in my life.”
