[The Guardian] An extreme dance on top of a bus shelter: Emmanuel Cole’s best photograph

An extreme dance on top of a bus shelter: Emmanuel Cole’s best photograph

‘This trio are celebrating the Notting Hill carnival with a dance called daggering which is common in Jamaica. This bus stop has now been altered – to stop people mounting it during the carnival’

Technically, the first time I was at the Notting Hill carnival was in 1990. My mum went there when she was pregnant with me. I started going properly, though, when I was seven or eight. The first time I photographed it was 2014 but I messed up and didn’t get any shots. So I really went for it the next year. I was in the thick of the action. I’d just come from a confined space, almost like a mosh pit. As I stumbled out, I saw a group of youngsters climbing on top of a bus stop. I had to anticipate what was coming next. I needed to change lenses, which wasn’t ideal. As the trio on the left started moving, I bent down, put a different lens on, and started photographing.

It all happened so fast. I have no idea who the three people are. To this day, I’ve never been able to identify them. They’re just people celebrating carnival. What they are doing is called daggering, a form of dancing in the Caribbean. It usually has a run-up and a jump, then a dancing motion. It’s very common in Jamaican dancehall. This was an extreme version, performed on the top of a bus stop. They have since changed those bus stops as people would mount them and there were several accidents. This bus stop has been made into a glass one, to stop people getting on top of it during carnival.

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