Let the Music Take You

Dancing

Last month our Akanksha class learned about space. The kids learned about the Milky Way, the Solar System and its nine/eight planets, famous Indian astronauts and so on. When the kids found out that we were going to take a field trip to the Nehru planetarium they were ecstatic. Most of the kids had huge smiles, a few let out excited screams, and one kid, Ravindra, started dancing. He jumped up from the mat, put his hands in the air, closed his eyes and started shaking his hips and shoulders without shame. It was wonderful.

Dancing is big here. All of the Bollywood movies have musical interludes that may or may not have anything to do with the plot of the movie. The choreography, costumes, singers (all of the songs are lip-synced), etc. take up most of the budget of any Bollywood film. The songs saturate all of the radio stations, are set as ringtones on cellular phones and are sung by people of all ages and classes. All of the songs have their own exaggerated dance moves. I know, it sounds ridiculous and to me it kind of is. But here this Bollywood song and dance is the coolest of the cool in pop culture. Thus the boys in my class sing Om Shanti Om and imitate Shah Rukh Kahn’s shoulder-shaking and hip-swiveling.

In February John and I were invited the sangeet of a friend of a friend. A sangeet is a traditional pre-wedding musical celebration. I’m told that in a lot of families it is a more informal night of energetic eating and dancing. But the one we went to was something different all together. When we entered the hall of the hotel there were a few women wearing extravagant sequined saris doing a choreographed dance on a stage at the front of the hall. We quickly learned that these were in fact family members of the bride and groom who had most likely been practicing for months to get these moves down. The couple happily danced too, and got married the next morning. (It was an arranged marriage, which is still very common here, a norm in many communities, and a different entry altogether.) Some folks danced along in the crowd and we were told that by the end of the night, most of them would have gotten on stage as some point to dance, either something they had planned, or because the music took them spontaneously. It was quite a sight, and actually very refreshing to see uninhibited middle-aged people dancing poorly but confidently in front of hundreds of others who couldn't get enough of it.