#JDPRIDE Spotlight with Just Ash

Welcome to another juicy community article! Our new series where we give a shoutout to our Just Dance players. Every year during the month of June, the LGBTQIA+ Community celebrates their identities, acceptance, equality, and accomplishments in a variety of ways to raise awareness of past and current facing issues. We believed that it would be a special time to sit down with one our fabulous community member Ashley also known as JustAsh to find out about their new initiative, whilst learning more about who he is. 

Ashley has been playing Just Dance for 12 years since the age of 10 as it helped his self-discovery from a young age whilst providing an aurora of confidence. He has always enjoyed dancing, but something clicked when playing Just Dance for the first time and a new passion was formed. He has also been able to form many strong friendships due to the community's kind and accepting nature.

“I wouldn’t be the person I am today without Just Dance!”

He believes that Just Dance is very inclusive and feel that one of his favourite things is how diverse the music and choreography is. Ash feels that there is something for everyone, especially those who belong within the LGBTQIA+ community.

He shares the feeling that Pride is a way of celebrating queer culture and expressing your true authentic self to the world and remembering those who have fought for and continue to fight for the rights of the community. We wanted to share with you a heart-warming and inspiring message when we asked Ash what pride meant to them:

“This year is the first time I’ve been able to celebrate pride as a completely out and proud gay man as I didn’t grow up in an environment that was supportive of who I was. However, seeing people be out and proud helped me so much to feel like I wasn’t alone and that I fit in somewhere”.

#JDPride is a hashtag which Ashley created as he believes a large part of the Just Dance community is made up of LGBTQIA+ people and he wanted to find a way to highlight them! The hashtag is all about showing queerness through Just Dance and making others in the community feel included.

“There are so many young Just Dance fans who are discovering their identities and seeing people be open about it can really help”

Ashley feels it would be amazing to see the queer Just Dance community come together and share their art. Here within the community team, we support and share the same love and passion to make this into something amazing.

We asked what kind of things people could be posting to get involved with #JDPride and his response was anything. It could be a gameplay video, cosplay or fan art. Keeping it Just Dance and pride themed.

“Let your creativity flow”

All month-long Ashley will be uploading LGBTQIA+ themed videos using #JDPride he would like you to join in and celebrate the freedom of being your true authentic self.

To start off #JDPride with a bang, Ashley performed to “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” we can all agree that he slayed. You can find his fabulous uploads here.

We believe that #JDPride is a wonderful initiative to become involved with and we also would like to encourage our community to use it to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ Community. Celebrate and express who you are and have fun doing it!

We would like to thank our Ashley for his time and efforts in connecting the LGBTQIA+ Community during the important month of June. We cannot wait to see what you all have to offer. Make sure to use #JustDanceCreations with #JDPride so our team can highlight you in the future.

Till our next community article chat with us on @JustDance.