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Dancing to a new beat
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Bangaloreans are getting adventurous and learning the salsa and rueda as enthusiastically as they once learnt Bharathanatya, says HEMANGINI GUPTA
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Young professionals find dance relaxing. — Photo: Sampath Kumar G. P.
PEOPLE WITH two left feet had it easy in the Nineties. Trance ruled the nightclubs and its hypnotic, repetitive beats drew clubbers into a monotonous dance. Life was even easier post millennium. Lounge bars with their inviting sofas and Buddha Bar beats required little action apart from long sips of tall drinks; the only exertion was lengthy conversation. Disco was dead and dancing was quickly becoming an activity confined to jive sessions at Catholic Club dos and high school all nighters.
Then suddenly, by 2002, everything was turned upside down. The new century brought different trends in its wake and imposed a new hierarchy of cool. Sleazy video parlours gave way to slick bowling alleys.
Morning walks were replaced by energising evening gym sessions. The South Beach diet came back, VLCCs sprouted, fitness was the new catchword and everybody, but everybody, began to dance.
Varied forms
Bangalore is now flooded with dance schools. They teach rueda, meringue, group salsa, ballet, ballroom... you name it, you can learn it somewhere. Younger kids are being sent to ballet classes where they proudly pirouette at ages three and four; a trend that was unheard of even in the last decade.
But now its not just the young and fit who go to contemporary dance classes; it's middle aged couples looking for an activity to keep them together, older women looking for a rejuvenating pastime, busy software professionals discovering a passion.
"We assume our students have two left feet," laughs Lourd Vijay of Dance Studio at Opus. He says that people who begin to dance soon lose all inhibition and shed convention.
"Girls ask the boys to dance and lots of older women come in to learn, seeing it as a form of workout," he says. As the pioneer of the salsa-meringue craze in Bangalore, Vijay says these forms have caught on since they are easier to learn.
Vijay and his troupe have taken their Latin dances to workshops held at bars and clubs, and his students can choose to take a class that is tailored to meet their needs: only for women or for the above-45 age group.
Classes and workshops go into overdrive in the Christmas season when more people feel the need to brush up on their dance skills.
Taking a dance class might mean some hectic movement at the end of a long workday, but most people who go to dance classes see it as a pick-me-up rather than a further loss of energy. Lokesh Naik signed up at the dance school Swingers soon after it opened in Bangalore. "I find it more refreshing than tiring," says this technical writer for a software company. "I release stress through dance and whatever time rehearsals are for a show, I make sure I am available!"
Swingers has separate courses to allow serious students to sign up for professional lessons. For people like Naik, who always wanted to dance but didn't have these opportunities in their teens, a professional course offers them the challenges they are seeking.
"I've been dancing since college and always loved to dance," says Naik. "Swingers asked me to join their professional troupe and I would have considered it, except that I'm settled in my career now and my writing provides me my bread and butter. It's too late to make a switch and learn the basics, but I'm dancing more now than ever before."
The dance space at Swingers throbs with the booming beats of popular commercial music. TV screens relay the inside classes to trainers sitting in the reception area.
The swish interiors are complemented by high quality human resources: as with any dance school worth its name in Bangalore, trainers are flown in from the dance capitals of the world to share their styles. Broadway, off Broadway, anything that sounds authentic suffices.
Professional trainers
Watching the frenzied class in action on a TV monitor, Swingers' Artistic Director Prasanna explains that the dance school encourages people to join its professional courses and take part in their full fledged shows.
The school had just flown in choreographer Adrianna Juan from New York to help train students for a show; reinforcement of their commitment to constantly bring in foreign talent and influences from varied forms — modern jazz, funk, salsa.
Professionalising dance classes and bringing in experts from across the world has helped take contemporary dance right into people's homes.
The hallowed beats of the nattuvangam, even in such traditional areas as Malleswaram, are now accompanied (somewhat incongruously) by the contemporary beats of electronic music; a sure indication that Western dance is here to stay.
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Bangalore
Chennai
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