The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : ‘Belly dance is a ritual that liberates women’

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Saturday, Oct 04, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

‘Belly dance is a ritual that liberates women’

Exponent of the art form, Bindi Khare, is in Hyderabad to conduct a workshop

— PHOTO: NAGARA GOPAL

Bindi Khare during the class at Hyderabad on Friday.

HYDERABAD: She refuses to look at it as just an exotic and erotic form of dancing. For Bindi Khare, belly dance is a ritual that offers emancipation for a woman.

The popular dancer and choreographer from Mumbai who is in the city to conduct a workshop on belly dance at Orange Studio, says the dance form with its mystical and sensuous body movements helps one keep healthy and fit.

“Please don’t look at belly dance as an exotic dance form that is performed in revealing attire. It stimulates eight chakras in the body and helps tone the body,” she says.

Tones up all parts

At the gym, one lifts weights to keep fit but this dance uses one’s own weight to offer similar results. “It helps tone up the neck, chest, stomach and hips and makes a woman feel much younger and energetic,” says Ms. Bindi who walked into record books with a non-stop dance performance for 55 hours and 15 minutes.

She is also trained in Latin Ballroom, Salsa, Hip Hop among others. But belly dance, she says, is one form that a woman can enjoy immensely and dance by herself. “Unlike dances such as Salsa and others, here a woman does not need a partner and can seek it as an expression of her own self. Anyone from the age of 5 years to 80 years can practice it,” she says.

Varied styles

With little stress on facial expressions, it involves the entire body and the prescribed dress code is harem pant or skirt along with a top. “The attire should be free and flowing to aid the rhythm of body,” says Ms. Bindi, who is teaching Egyptian style of belly dance at the workshop. “There are variants such as Turkish and others. Like dialects changing from one place to another, belly dance too has some variance derived from that region,” she points out.

Belly dance is meant for that mystical and rhythmic tunes and songs that are very Arabic in nature. Heavy beats or drums, like in Hip Hop, do not gel with it. “If our traditional dances are rituals to god, this is a ritual to one’s own self,” she says.

Ms. Bindi is also a trustee of YVSA Trust, founded by her mother, and teaches dance to the visually challenged.

She is working on dance as a therapy and the quest is to create energy to various parts of body through it.

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