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Dancing wizard

Dancer Prithviraj is all charged up after his educative trip to the Big Apple

Prithviraj Ramaswamy

Not everyone gets to chalk out his or her own path. Dancer Prithviraj Ramaswamy is definitely one of the very few lucky ones. He started teaching jazz, salsa, hip-hop and ballet when people didn't even understand these dance forms properly. Soon this passion became a successful career through his four-year-old dance school Stepz.

Now he plans to go one step further and upgrade the levels to match international standards. Back in Hyderabad after a six-month trip to New York, where he learnt the different dance forms from some of the best dance schools, Prithvi wants to incorporate these new ideas in his school. "I want to set a standard syllabus for the 10-month courses so that when a student moves abroad he or she should be able to join the classes there without any difficulty," remarks the lad who hails from Chennai.

The trip was a big learning experience and New York has left him quite mesmerised. "The city is a hub for dance schools. This is also because Manhattan is a place where most Broadway shows happen and the demand for choreographers and dancers is very high. But unfortunately there's hardly any Indian presence," says Prithvi who earned the advanced beginners certificate from Broadway dance school and garnered an opportunity for his school to attend their workshop in July.

But he chose not to limit his learning to one school and joined others to learn more. "Every school has its own way of teaching. I trained in Brazilian martial art dance Capoeira, Russian classical Ballet and Salsa on two, also called New York Salsa, other than jazz, hip hop and modern dance," says the 31-year-old who got the opportunity to learn it from the King of Salsa, Eddie Torres.

"It's all nice but expensive," says Prithviraj. "Each class costs $ 20. And if you include the travel and the stay, it's quite a bomb. There have been days when I didn't eat much because I had no money."

He intends to go back again this July to attend the workshop and learn to shoot videos from the New York Film Institute. "I am not able to find enough dancers for my school. People don't realise dance can make for a good career."

MANGALA RAMAMOORTHY

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