This blog expresses my thoughts on dancing through the years, starting from early childhood to adulthood. It explores my opinions on the art and how they evolved over the course of a decade. My relationship with dancing began at the tender age of four. I was enrolled at a local “bharatnatyam” dance class, situated in BARC Colony. My mother seemed very keen but I was disinterested. I mean 4 year old Abhipsha enjoyed the following activities- dressing up dolls, watching television, playing make believe games with other children and sleeping. As you can see dancing was not a part of the activities of my choice. If Bharatnatyam was the fashion world and our class the Runway magazine, then my teacher was Miranda Priestly for sure.

She was a 60 something year old disciplinarian, she wore crisp Chettinad sarees, a pair of glasses and a permanent frown. You see, most human vertebrae have a thoracic curve. I’m saying most and not all, as clearly this lady here was an exception. Her back was perfectly straight and her posture- impeccable. It does make me wonder, did she replace her upper vertebrae with an iron rod? I guess we’ll find out in the autopsy report.

She was evidently very passionate about the art and was a little harsh on the children. It was an all girls class with students of varying age groups- me being the youngest. You can probably tell, 4 year old me found it hard to pick up the dance steps. Also I must be honest with you, I suffer from directional dyslexia. Which essentially means that I cannot tell the difference between left and right as it is not inherently present in me. Apparently those synapses never built during my developmental years. I started sleeping in the classes. Now how can you teach a 4 year old, directionally challenged, attention deficit, disinterested and lazy child this ancient art form? It is indeed, a cumbersome task. We were taught about the “rhombus”, or as 4 year old me called it “wrong bus” because it made zero sense to me. It was a mysterious diamond-like shape that was made using your legs and feet (it was later useful in my 7th grade math class).

It was very difficult to master the basics. Girls were regularly beaten and yelled at if there were minor inadequacies in their dance steps. I was a frequent victim to these punishments. Mostly, I was in the class for comic relief. I was constantly laughed at, because of my antics which earned me the moniker “Sleeping Beauty”. One day, when I had finished a year in this class, we were asked to bring notebooks. Unfortunately, 5 year old me could spell a few words only (I would spell “milk” as “M-I-K”, the L was for losers). I stopped attending the classes after some time which was a great relief for me. Some time later I was told, that the teacher had dismissed me from the classes. I like to believe that I left on my own accord.

I genuinely do not understand my family members’ obsession with dance. I was yet again, enrolled in a dance class. It was held by the same academy. Except this time, it was run by a husband-wife duo. The wife, “ma’am” was an absolute delight. She was great to chat with. I took a liking to her. But then, from the second year onward, we had the “Sir”. He was odd, like the male counterpart of the old teacher I had. A perfectionist, dance fanatic, orthodox old man infamous for his temper. And yes, the defaulters were punished regularly. I was catching up well, I practiced regularly, therefore I wasn’t beaten that often. But he was the very Devil reincarnate. He was rude, narcissistic, racist, overly critical and a sadistic man. This behavior came from his perfectionist nature that would not tolerate disrespect towards the art. In the meanwhile, we had Bollywood dance classes in school. I don’t know why, but I always looked at Bollywood dance as sinful(?)

The reason for this could be that we were always taught in the bharatnatyam classes that bollywood dance was not “true” dance, largely commercial and obscene.

This was the early 2000s, Govinda was still in the scene. It was a taboo to dance on “Soni De Nakhre” in the local Diwali parties. Partially also because, there were some excellent dancers in my class and I was simply not as good as them. I felt hurt and by the age of 8, I had concluded that dancing was simply not my cup of tea. I did not like my peers who were good at it, I found them to be too full of themselves. My mind was loaded with these precocious thoughts that only seemed to fade away a decade later. I was tremendously shy and did not feel comfortable showing off the moves I learnt from “9XM”, a popular Bollywood music television show.

It was THAT age. Yes, I was inching towards puberty. At that point, boys were my chief area of interest and nothing else mattered. I lost interest in the bharatnatyam classes and I stopped dancing well. I was slowly pushed to back of the class. I was yelled at and insulted by the Sir. However school dance classes were getting slightly less nightmare-ish. The sole reason being that they had good pop music. But I was still too conscious to dance on “Waka Waka” in front of 40 people.

I liked going to the bharatnatyam classes, because there was a shop nearby from where I could buy some titbits. Shopping was my new found love, apart from Justin Bieber of course. The dance classes in school were slowly turning into fun sessions where my friends and I often joked around. I finished 6 years of the bharatnatyam course after which I graduated.

By the age of thirteen, I was fully convinced that I will not be dancing anymore. There were annual concerts in school though, where I did take part in the dancing activities. That was largely owing to two reasons: a) I did not land any acting roles b) my friends would compel me to join them so that we could collectively embarrass ourselves on stage. Alas, those were tough times. My brain still felt a strong repulsion towards those who glorified the art of moving their axial and appendicular skeleton rhythmically to beats. I did however like making musical tunes with the slit across my glottis, present in my larynx (in layman’s terms “voice box”).

In this era of YouTube videos and Instagram recommendations, a certain Matt Steffanina popped up on my feed one day. He essentially choreographed hip hop dance for his class. My main reason to watch that 8 minute long video, was because most of the songs were the ones I liked. As I watched one video after another, I asked myself, “How did he manage to get his students to look better than Fifth Harmony themselves in the Worth It music video?”

About 9 months later, I rediscovered my long lost love for Bollywood music. I absolutely loved doing the hook steps in parties. A large chunk of a Bollywood song’s popularity is credited to the music video that features the lead actors and actresses in the film, shake a leg to a party song. A common formula used by producers to get the movie to sell tickets is: popular actors(see nepotism)+stereotypical plot+remixed 90s song with new dance steps+get the song to trend using internet challenges= 100 crore club=SUCCESS! I jumped on to the bandwagon.

My opinion on dancing slowly changed. Soon I ended up befriending girls obsessed with Korean pop. I too, entered the unending vortex of Korean pop. What intrigues me has to be the culture that is absurd, hilarious, creative and at times NSFW, created by a loyal army of pre-pubescent and teenaged girls. A common formula used by Talent company owners in Korea: good looking people who meet unrealistic Korean beauty standards+aggressive training for many years+ singing talent+ brilliant choreography=Soft Power=SUCCESS! I saw a video of people dancing to a song by a well known Kpop group, “BTS”.

I slowly became obsessed and harboured a strong desire to join a dance class. I do like dancing and enrolled myself at a local contemporary dance class. It made me feel good, dance being a form of exercise. Exercising releases endorphins (happy hormones). I even devised a quick formula and realised that dancing was the solution to all my grievances: dancing+regular exercising+healthy eating+no academic pressure+ no anxiety= physically fit=happy=SUCCESS! I was awkward on the first day. I did feel inferior when I saw the people around me, with years and years of experienced under their belts. But I knew that with the right amount of practice, concentration and flexibility, I too can improve. It’s hardly been a month and I do have a long way to go. The atmosphere in the new class is positive, there was no room for humiliation and punishment, only passion and hard labour.

For those of you all who thought that this article is actually about dancing, you are wrong. It is about my thinking process. I feel that for me, dancing is a metaphor for a particular ugly habit my brain has. My opinions on dancing change unhaltingly, yet significantly. It represents the changing of the mind through the years. You see, growing up we’ve always had some preconceived notions about particular things. For example, I always felt that the popular local snack road side “vada pav” would give me diarrhoea. But my immune system destroyed whatever bacteria that may present in it, much like the way the first atomic bomb wiped Hiroshima and Nagasaki out of existence in 1945.

We quickly stereotype, jump to conclusions, judge easily and stick to this one frame in our head. We don’t adapt and evolve. Do you know what is the most successful organism in evolutionary terms? Humans? No. It is bacteria and virus. The reason being that they adapt easily. Which is why they have been around since 3.5 billion years. Which is also why there is no cure for common cold. We simply treat the symptoms. The causative agent for common cold is Rhinovirus. A virus that mutates so quickly, by the time they develop a vaccine for it, it has literally turned into something else. Doctors=0, Rhinovirus=1.

We need to open our minds to new ideas and opinions since the only constant in this universe is change. I developed an opinion on dancing owing to poor prior experience. But that does not mean that it has to be that way. We need to let go of old ideas and induct new ones into our lives.