After premiere day, Netflix's South African street dance series JIVA! shimmied its way to the top as the most-watched show in the country, basking in its international glamour. Pivotal to the show's success is its energetic cast, most palpably felt from promising South African actress and dancer Noxolo Dlamini in a feisty, go-for-broke portrayal of the main character Ntombi. While coping with the daily struggles of a suppressed dream and providing for her family, Ntombi enters a dance contest that injects some much-needed excitement into her life.

JIVA! is a huge television breakthrough for 27-year-old Noxolo who has been nurturing a love for acting, singing and dancing since childhood. Her schooling provided the groundwork for her passions. She joined the dance and drama club at The National School of the Arts for Dramatic Art, in Johannesburg where her first dance lesson was learning the Spanish flamenco. But her heart, she recalls, was really in theatre.

She would later leave the school owing to its competitive nature, enrolling in Dominican Convent School, also in Johannesburg, where she continued with drama and took ballet classes for the first time, besides just imitating what she saw. It was at this school where she thrived because, here, no one was competing with anyone. At the University of Pretoria, she gravitated towards theatre and graduated with a BA Degree in Dramatic Arts. It was also during her varsity days that she found herself enjoying more physical productions simply because they harnessed all her talents.