The Obamas are in India doing some politico-shmolitico-ness this week, as we have been following here at Sepia Mutiny. Lesson of the day: never underestimate a good dance number to bond transnational alliances.

The whole country watched Michelle Obama shaking a leg to hit Bollywood number Rang De Basanti during her interaction with school kids in Mumbai on Saturday. Then again on Sunday, while celebrating Diwali with children from a school in south Mumbai, she broke into a jig to join kids performing a Konkani folk dance, even inspiring the US President to join her on the dance floor. [ndtv]

I wonder if this may at all change the script to the upcoming “Obama” Bollywood movie, “Phas Gaye Re Obama” (“Obama is in a Fix”). It’s about Obama-loving Indian gangsters struggling amid the economic recession. How can they not have a Michelle Obama inspired dance number now?

Last summer, instead of their regular web episode, fans of The Guild were delighted to see a music video, “Do You Want to Date My (Avatar).” This summer, The Guild is back with another music video, “Game On.” Cue Zaboo and Codex (Day) sitting on a bed. Hint: Bollywood-themed dancing results. Enjoy!

Photo Credit: World of Higlet

(h/t Linzy)

And that’s where Renu Kansal comes to the rescue.

Old-timers may recognize her from her previous avatar, but over the last three years, Renu has enrolled over 630 students at her studio, Bollywood West, and now serves as the semi-official Bollywood ambassador of Colorado.Last February, Renu’s studio attracted national media attention, where she confessed (for shame) that she wasn’t a sure that a Bollywood dance studio would thrive out here in this forsaken land:

Students swing their hips, raise one hand to their mouths as if calling out to a lover, and then lift one leg and hop forward in a line. After the number, instructor Renu Kansal reminds the dancers to wave their arms side to side smoothly, so they don’t look “too drill-team-ish.” As if they were in a Bollywood movie, the dancers are trying to tell a story of romance. “I taught this in New York, and when we moved out here and I started Bollywood dancing classes, I was skeptical,” Kansal said in an interview. “I was like, oh gosh, I don’t know if this’ll work here. But I had to double my class offerings in under a month. It was a huge surprise to me.” [link]

As you might guess, her classes are not quite like those offered by the auntie who teaches the kids for the Diwali function. It’s a professional operation, and a serious dance studio. I’ve taken notice of the fact that she’s taken Denver by storm by opening her studio to everybody – across dance experiences, gender, age, and race. If you’ve seen these folks move once, you’re hooked by how much fun they’re having—and did we mention the fact that they’re good?

Because they’re good, Bollywood West has been popping up all over the news in the post-Slumdog era– in places you’d expect, but even more spectacularly—in places you wouldn’t. On the no-brainer side, Bollywood West has performed at some of the most high profile events in Denver—like the November 2008 Starz Denver Film Festival opening of that film that won some awards. 

But last May, Bollywood “went to bat.” Billed as “a great chance for the Bollywood-curious to get their feet wet — and for Bollywood fans to check out the great American pastime, “ you may still be wondering why Renu’s company would be asked to perform for a Colorado Rockies game (2007 World Series, um, hopefuls,) And here it is:

“They wanted something upbeat, high-energy, youthful and vibrant. We are, apparently, all of those things… We play cricket in India, so the transition to baseball takes a little explaining, usually,” Kansal says. “People want to know where the wickets went and why you have to run around four bases instead of back and forth between two — and why the games are so short. Cricket games go on for days.  “You never know what could happen,” she goes on. “We could redefine the point of confluence between Bollywood and baseball. Hopefully we can turn some sports fans into Bollywood fans as well.” [link]

It’s all about confluence, you see. Last month, Renu and her company were asked to present at what’s probably one of the most popular and talked about cultural event series around here: Mixed Taste, at MCA Denver. The idea is to take two speakers who have nothing to do with one another, throw them in a space where they present one after the other without referring to each other, and then let all hell break loose in the discussion. I was there. So… we had Bollywood West vs. Urban Parkour. (And no, I’m not going even try to explain what Urban Parkour is. Just watch the link, ok?) The crowd is the urban contemporary museum meets artsy hipster crowd—- not so brown, in other words. (Proof: I was complimented on my dancing at the reception and almost choked on my drink.)

Back to topic. After watching Urban Parkour (APEX movement/CO Parkour) literally bounce off walls and elicit “oohs” and “aaahs,” I was a little worried as to how Bollywood dance vs. Urban Parkour would play out. Suspense. Then Renu dazzled us through a genealogy and classification of Bollywood-style dancing—from past to present in under 45 minutes, with ample demonstrations by her company, including a performance of the recent Aaja Nachle number, “Show Me Your Jalwa.” As for the discussion, here’s how it went down:

The first question?

“What’s a jalwa?”

And shortly thereafter,

“I ask that each group show me its jalwa.”

And so they did, after which many other questions followed.  The Bollywood folks commented on Parkour, the Parkour on Bollywood. And it ended with the Parkour folks (called “Traceurs”) bouncing off more things while Bollywood West jammed to “Jai Ho.” Surreal, but definitely one of the most fun and interesting events I’ve been to for a long time.

Given that we’re apparently the only two people in Colorado who read Sepia Mutiny (Mountain mutineers, hello???) I wanted to ask her some questions that have been keeping me up at night, and she obliged to answering them.

1.    Did Madhuri Dixit pass on her dancing jalwa to you in a mystical ceremony, or did you actually convince your parents that it was ok to study Bollywood dancing?  

Sadly, neither. My dad, like most desi dads of the time, was not at all supportive to send me to college as a (gasp! Cue shame!) dance major. I managed to capitalize on the Pavlovian Dad-word “engineer” and convinced my parents that a degree in Audio Engineering and Sound Reinforcement/Acoustical Engineering was a good idea. I think they didn’t know what it actually was, luckily for me. (i.e., listen to music all the time and hang around all your friends in the band, yet while still getting paid). They heard the word engineer and rejoiced at my potential stability and maintenance of the desi career-trinity (daktur-enjneer-compootersciences)

2.    Your studio is thriving. From what I’ve read, it sounds as if you hadn’t predicted something like Bollywood West would take off here. What about the Denver/ Colorado area has made it so supportive of what you’re doing?

Not that I didn’t want it to succeed, I just had to be realistic, as does anyone starting up a business. I planned for it to be really lean for a couple of years… That said, I think that even though Colorado is considered flyover/RedState turf, Denver and Boulder are small cultural bright spots on the way to either coast. We don’t get enough credit. People out here are very culturally oriented, very physically active, and there’s a prevailing “why not?” attitude when presented with something new. My student base is made up of a lot “why not’s” that have been straight hypnotized by the jhatka-matkas and the haripas, and they keep coming back, week after week, year after year! Out here it’s really such a diverse group that comes to our classes, it makes it hard to pin down demographics and target-audience data. I guess the only recurring theme is that our people like to shake it…

3.    This is a hard one, but what would you say to those cynical party-poopers who look at the American enthusiasm for Bollywood dancing as Orientalist? (To those who decry Bollywood dancing as vulgar and superficial, I say you remind me of my elderly relatives. The crotchety ones.)

I’d say it just comes back around—American movies of the 30s and 40s were musical style, just like Bollywood. It just happened that American film trended away from this style and Indian cinema found a way to make it work in almost any situation. With Moulin Rouge, High School Musical, the movie of Rent, and a bunch of other near-to-recent films, it’s ridiculous to say that India has a lockdown on the concept of songs/dances in movies. It’s just that mainstream American film abandoned the model until only recently. The intrigue and popularity of Bollywood movies now serves as a catalyst to make it all more mainstream digestible here in the US again and for the American film industry to re-popularize soundtrack oriented films and incorporate dance again. Western grandparents see it as coming back around to the style they loved, this is nothing new. And I don’t think healthy interest and enthusiasm for any culture is a bad thing—it’s the opposite action that perpetuates all things bad and the worst behaviors in society. I remember one time, with Bollywood Axion, we were shooting for a Japanese documentary and they had followed us along to some performance at the South Street Seaport Diwali Mela. At the end of the shooting day, after performances, the director wanted us to say something cheesy and exuberant on-camera like “Bollywood for everyone!” So we shout, “Bollywood for everyone!!” and some crotchety old aunties, shuffling by, snapped at us “No! Bollywood is just for Indian!!” and scowled like salty hags that they were. Unless they personally were descendents of DadaSahib Phalke, I say nobody has any ownership over Bollywood, as an industry or a culture.

4.    What do you see as the next big trends in Bollywood dancing? Aerial? Parkour? Mosh pits?

Parkour definitely is a new trend, seen in both Tashan and ham-fistedly in Dilli-6. Akshay being part-ninja, executed his runs pretty well, though I’m sure there are local Bombay traceurs who would put him to shame. (Including our own BongBreaker, of London.) We’ve only seen one instance of Aerial—that of Isha Shervani in Luck By Chance, although I still maintain I’d performed the first bollywood aerial routine, last summer. I think the more the global stage of dance is opening up, with borderless media like online, TV programs like SYTYCD, etc—the style will continue to influence and be influenced globally. There was a big run of salsa-influenced bollywood dancing, a few years ago… it will change to Polish goat-farmer dancing, if that’s the new hot trend. I’m sure they can throw it down, the Polish goat-farmers…

5.    Lastly, are you as dumbfounded as I am that they haven’t shot a Bollywood movie in Aspen or Vail yet?

Yes!! And it would be a breeze to hire back-up dancers and a choreographer, locally, if they did—cough cough.

Afterward: Shortly after Renu answered these questions, she dropped a tantalizing tidbit but swore me to secrecy for a few days. (DesiDancer’s been plotting some new tamasha.) Stay tuned…

Are you confused? Uneasy? Constipated?

You may be suffering from PSSD. Post-Slumdog Stress Disorder is a very real ailment, with devastating consequences for its sufferers. Victims of PSSD often, on a daily, if not hourly basis, endure flashes of rage, manic ranting, rocking back and forth while twitching slightly in the corner, and a smug proclivity to email links to anti-”Slumdog Millionaire” news stories with the subject line: “HA! Look who agrees with me! LOOK!!”.

If you have been accosted by allegedly well-meaning but clearly oblivious, pink cylons who initiate insensitive conversations about this movie with you, DO SOMETHING. Instead of being harmed by that dangerous trauma trigger, show them this educational video, so that they leave you the fuck alone, then you can go back to being bitter about not going to medical or law school, in peace.

Link courtesy of old skool mutineer Sexy_Gulti_Ho. And yes, that’s his screen name.

What do you think? I think Katee and Joshua rock. The first judge made an interesting comment along the lines of “You know, it’s funny how much this ‘Indian cultural dance’ resembles other dance cultures. When they do this [moves his arms], it’s like hip hop. And that thing with the knees, it’s like Russian dance.” What he didn’t realize is that Hindi film choreographers have been happily ripping off other cultures’ dance forms for decades!

What you probably didn’t know is that the music being played is a poem by Tagore, set to music by Garry Schyman, and sung in sung in Bengali by 17 year old Palbasha Siddique (originally from Bangladesh, now living in MN). The music is a key part of the appeal of the videos, tying together the vignettes as neatly as the visual editing does. This is funny because the music was applied after the fact; at the time Matt was just dancing to the snapping of his own fingers.

The music has catapulted Siddique, who is still a senior in high school, into the spotlight:

At the moment, she is one of the most heard singers in the world…”It’s crazy,” said Siddique, who lives in Northeast Minneapolis with her mother and brother. “Right now it’s number one on amazon.com in the soundtrack [category], and number six overall, so that’s a really big accomplishment, because even ‘American Idol’ is number nine right now. I just never knew this would turn out so incredible. People are making ring tones out of it. Everyone on Facebook is adding me, and I had no idea there are so many Bengalis in our community, and they have all heard the song…” [Link]

Despite her young age, this isn’t her first recording. In fact, “she recorded her first CD when she was 7 and sang “God Bless America” before a Twins game when she was 11.”[Link] Her talents are the reason why she’s in the USA in the first place – she came to the country on a scholarship to the MacPhail Center for the Arts.

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p>She has also released a video with a Bangladeshi-American fusion band appositely named Melange. Their first video, “Maa” (what a good desi girl – the song is about mothers, not drugs or sex ) is below:

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To close the circle, this is the Tagore poem that is used as the lyrics for “Praan”, the song that accompanies Harding as he dances around the world. You can see why he thought it captured the sentiment behind his efforts perfectly:

Stream of Life
by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.[Link]

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Two things struck me about their performance. The first is how easily it was accepted by both the audience and the judges, something that would never happen in the US. The audience loved both the Michael Jackson impersonation and the Bhangra. The judges loved it as a dance act, they didn’t condescend to it at all. Heck, they even describe the dancers as typical brits with a day job and a dream. There was no talk about it being exotic or foreign, and no PC admiration for the multicultiness of it all.

The second is that it was weaker than their original performance. I thought the choreography wasn’t as tight, and the integration of the two styles was not done as well. The problem is that neither seems to have great range as a dancer. Suleman is a Michael Jackson impersonator and Madhu is a bhangra dancer. Once the shock of seeing the two together wears off, how far can they go?

Here’s their first performance for comparison:

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Still, I’ll start watching American Idol when it’s even half as good as this …

He is tall, slim, and strikingly long limbed. Dressed in jewel-colored silk tunics and antique ornaments that are family heirlooms, he looks more like a handsome young maharaja than a traditional South Indian dancer. Newsweek

Yes, I know, vomit, it sounds like more exoticizing pablum from a mainstream media source. But getting past the opening drivel, this article (posted in the news tab, thanks Brij01!) turned out to be about a rather fascinating family:

Aniruddha Knight is the ninth generation heir of a 200-year-old family of professional dancers and musicians from Chennai, India. He is also half American. His father, Douglas Knight, married into this artistically rich family when he studied classical drumming on a South Indian mridangam at Wesleyan University, where Aniruddha’s late grandmother–T. Balasaraswati, India’s prima danseuse–and her two musician brothers had taught since 1962.

Aniruddha followed his mother and grandmother, continuing the family’s bharatanatyam tradition:

Knight is fluent in Tamil, his mother’s language, and spends half a year in India, performing and learning from aunts and cousins who had worked with his mother. He has established a school and an archive of family history in Chennai. (The Smithsonian boasts an archive of Bala’s performances, too.) It houses all the records of his grandmother’s performances.

About his mixed parentage:

“It’s isolating to identify with two cultures, it creates a split personality. I can never be just one or the other, it’s a heartwrenching lonely process. But then, what I have, many don’t have.”

Those against mixed marriages often cite fear of waning traditions, culture, language, etc., as a reason to date within one’s own ethnic community. So it’s heartwarming to see this family’s artistic legacy continuing on, and even thriving, under the stewardship of its youngest, half-desi member. But do other half-desis feel the same sense of loneliness and isolation? Most that I’ve known feel as though they have a deeper connection to both, not an alienation from either, but it’s clearly a personal path. I’m curious to hear any stories readers might have to share on this topic.

Also, I watched a bit of his performance here, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m a rank ignoramus about bharatanatyam, so perhaps I’m just used to the more typical form:

However, the version that Knight dances is stylistically unique. It originated as a temple offering performed by young women who were dedicated to serving God by retelling ancient Hindu myths through music and dance in the temple courtyard.

He sings while dancing as well, which threw me off a bit. But, again, this could be entirely due to my own lack of knowledge. His hand movements are beautiful though…I encourage anyone with a bharatanatyan background to please take a look and share your thoughts.

The troupe recently performed at the Joyce Theater in New York (encores performances to follow), which earned yet another mildly positive yet utterly clueless review from the Grey Lady (which I will dissect later), and will continue on to the following locations: Feb 19-24, 2008 – The Joyce Theater , NYC

Apr 13, 2008: Stony Brook University , NYNrityagram is fairly unique as it’s the only school of dance (and so much more–beyond the scope of this post)that fairly strictly adheres to the ‘gurukulam’ format year round–students living in a preferably forested retreat with their guru; eating, sleeping and breathing their chosen discipline(s). It’s a very intense and effective teaching method for anything that requires a great deal of ‘muscle memory’ and spatial awareness. According to my anecdotal experience, even a few weeks of said Gurukulam-style training will raise anyone’s standard by a noticeable amount in only a few weeks.

I will be attending the performance at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Center on March 5th (not the 4th as indicated previously), from 7:30 till 9:30 (perhaps dressed in my Fab India best, if my mother succeeds in persuading me to dress like a cut-rate SRK–otherwise, look for the surly brown fellow with an uneven goatee)

contact details for tickets (and they are not cheap) are below:

UR students FREE, $24 UR employees, $32 adults Phone: 804.289.8980 Email: modlinarts@richmond.edu

According to the Berkeley Bhangra team, there actually are some places one should not do Bhangra [via Manish in response to Vinod, below]:

As well as some places where one should do Bhangra (anywhere anytime at Cal) [via Vinod]:

No wonder people looked at me funny when I busted out my best dance moves at TraderJoes …

Related posts: I’m not afraid of Elvis, Old folk can still dance, and many others