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Magazine
Seduced by Salsa
HARSH KABRA
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More and more urban Indians are taking to Salsa as a way of reconnecting with themselves and their bodies.
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Salsa helps people express themselves, connect with others, revive their pride, and feel good about themselves.
Fluid moves: Sandip Soparrkar and super model Jessy Randhawa give in to Salsa.
On an otherwise nondescript stretch of Mumbai’s Tulsi Pipe Road, a tiny exception bathed in light stands out. Head closer and it turns out to be a dance training institute. As you open the glass doors to the two-room studio, you are swamped by
a lurking crescendo. Drenched in an infectious blast of Conga-based rhythm, strident horns and piano chords, a battery of Mumbaikars — young and not-so-young — sway as twosomes in perfect unison, stepping light and quick before turning slow and sensuous with an exhilarant advance of the arm, a stately flick of the hair and a buoyant tap of the feet. In the short, yet fast, steps of Salsa, as an incendiary couple dance with Afro-Cuban, Columbian and Puerto Rican strains, they appear to be unlocking newer energy within.
They belong to the growing clutch of Indians being seduced by Salsa. Across urban India, Salsa courses, with fees ranging from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 10,000, are reigning high in dance institutes. A host of clubs and discotheques are dedicating exclusive Latin evenings to Salsa and witnessing unending queues of patrons raring to shell out twice or thrice the regular cover charges. Popular cinema is embracing Salsa ever more ardently, as are reality dance shows on the telly, such as “Nach Baliye” and “Jhalak Dikhla Ja”. Celebrities are finding it hard to resist its lure, even when they are away from the arc lights. Salsa sessions at Mumbai-based choreographer Sandip Soparrkar’s Bandra studio have had everyone from Aishwarya Rai, Kajol and Farah Khan, to Sonali Bendre, Sonam Kapoor and Ameesha Patel coming over.
Spreading fast
It was in 2001 that Kaytee Namgyal established Salsa India, India’s largest Salsa-only dance school. Today, the school has more than a dozen dance studios across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Pune, and has trained over 5,000 dancers, many of whom have taken up Salsa as their profession. Its training workshops have even reached cities in Sikkim, Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to a tumultuous response. “Salsa is doing remarkably well in India although it started here only a few years ago,” says Namgyal. “There is something riveting about Salsa that grabs you and compels you to strut across the dance floor to the pulsating beat.”
“Whether you are learning with a partner or for yourself, whether it’s Salsa or any other style, dancing is a great way to exercise, build confidence and improve posture,” maintains Shiamak Davar. “Salsa helps you to be more aware of your body, and understand your partner better.” In India recently, Hollywood actor-dancer Katya Virshilas averred, “Salsa is all about expression and has a lot to do with being flirtatious, mysterious and having fun. It is for everyone, even people who don’t have partners.”
Good for self-confidence
“Salsa is known to develop self-confidence, add grace, elegance and style to one’s body language and develop personality,” says Soparrkar. “Anybody can avail of its benefits. All one is required to do is believe in oneself.” Soparrkar says that learning dance together with one’s partner is an increasingly popular way to chill out for a growing number of urban Indians. To the younger lot, he observes, this comes across as a connection with the world of glamour.
Lourd Vijay, who is an MBA and used to be a businessman before he turned a dance instructor and established a popular dance studio in Bangalore, says, “Of all the dances, Salsa has caught the fancy of the younger crowd.” Concurs Mridula Martis, a chartered accountant, who gave up a job with a multinational audit and advisory services firm to start her own dance academy in Bangalore: “Salsa is indeed one of the main attractions at our academy. More and more software professionals are opting for it.” In fact, the likes of Anand Majumdar’s Quickstep Dance Academy and Sumeet Nagdev’s Expressions in Mumbai are also offering training to corporates as part of special tie-ups.
Before he turned actor with the serial “Remix”, Siddhanth Karnick used to be a dance instructor. “I was inspired to take up Salsa after watching the Vanessa Williams-starrer ‘Dance With Me’,” he says. “I enjoy dancing because a lot more work goes into it. Apart from the expressions, it requires a lot of coordination and energy.” Ashwin Mushran, a Mumbai-based actor and Salsa instructor, reveals, “These days, the ratio of men-to-women at my classes is generally 60:40. More men are getting comfortable with themselves and wanting to dance.”
Be it the Australian Salsa Classic or the European Open Salsa Masters, Indian “salseros” are bagging the top honours. To boot, the All India Salsa Championships with lavish prizes up for grabs and the India International Salsa Congress featuring the global who’s who of Salsa, have provided further impetus to Salsa in India. Indian “salsaholics” even have half-a-dozen web sites dedicated to them, brimming as they are with information, experiences and event updates.
Changing mores
Many observers attribute this growing Indian interest in Salsa to the liberalisation of social mores. It perhaps helps that this dance form doesn’t encumber physical intimacy with the tensions of sensuality. “Salsa teaches you to cooperate rather than control,” says Salsa trainer Victor Menezes. “Look at these people,” he says, pointing towards a lively bunch of Salsa learners at a Hyderabad institute, “They are all drunk on the dance.”
And age could well be the last defining criterion. “I love Salsa because it makes me feel free and uninhibited and allows me to use my whole body,” says Col (Retd.) Suprotik Ghosh, who has been learning the dance at Mumbai’s Spark for well over three months. “A few months of Salsa workout have left me standing taller and slimmer,” gushes Rajni Patel, a 30-something mother of two. “I feel more confident, alive and excited today,” she exults. “Thanks to Salsa, I have found an energy I never knew I had,” adds Anusha Thiagarajan, a post-graduate student of economics. Once painfully shy, Anusha says she is a changed person today. “Salsa is easy to pick. I never thought I could dance, especially among people.”
“Even when I am abroad, Salsa helps me break the ice and mix with the local people, because it has taken the entire world by storm,” says Bangalore-based IT professional Pradeep Christy, who lives out of his suitcase for most of the year. “Salsa is a beautiful and social way of enjoying music,” says Manish Rohatgi, whose IT job took him from Delhi to Bangalore before Salsa offered him a wonderful way of making friends in a new city. “I was most fascinated by this dance form when I saw Patrick Swayze’s moves in “Dirty Dancing”. It is classy, fun and stylish.” For Mumbai-based Gargi Shah, the better half of retired bureaucrat Ajay, Salsa has been a way of communicating with her husband. “He often compliments me on how good I look when I dance. That means a lot to a woman after 37 years of marriage.” Chennai-based T. Neetha tells us how Salsa has helped her overcome the depression that followed a painful break-up last year. “Feeling the rhythm has made all the difference. Thanks to my Salsa group at Fitness One, I don’t feel lonely any more.”
Salsa is also gaining acceptance globally because of its therapeutic benefits. Dance therapists are already using Salsa in non-verbal psychotherapy to treat people with serious psychosocial and behavioural problems — including schizophrenia, depression, autism and eating disorders — and help teenagers with severe emotional disabilities.
Means of expression
Salsa, they say, helps people express themselves, connect with others, revive their pride, and feel good about themselves. Besides, like any other dance, it lifts one’s spirits by releasing feel-good endorphins in the brain. By suffusing the dancers with the idea of looking good on the dance floor, it helps them keep away from addictions. Says Mumbai-based fitness instructor Errol d’Cruz, “Salsa is among the most complete exercises that pump up adrenaline and exercise the heart and core muscles. It is also a good way of de-stressing.”
Of course, one needs to take care of one’s feet (and others’ too) and abdominal muscles, if they are weak. “Although Salsa is not a competition, one can feel outdone at times and end up with a feeling of jealousy or rejection,” warns d’Cruz. However, beneath Salsa’s relaxed appearance, urban India is busy discovering a means of expressing and firing oneself up.
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