A DANCE FOR YOU AND ME

When you, the performer, hear the first strains of the opening music and start sensing the lights over the audience dimming in anticipation of your entry, what are the thoughts running through your mind? Are you running through the sequence of the show and your part in it, one last time? Are you stressed over the hooks holding the top of your costume in place, the ones you noticed too late were working themselves loose? Are you saying a prayer?

How many of you look out over the sea of barely visible heads and faces in the semi darkness and wonder about who they belong to? Could you have guessed that seated in your audience is a banker or an insurance adjustor who knows enough about about your craft to truly surprise you? Who, but for her choice of a different means to earn money, is talented enough to be a colleague in the dance company you work for.

When Irene told me her dance story for this month’s column, this is the thought which crossed my mind. Irene started with dance very young, through figure skating. After many years of doing this, she got injured and needed to stop for an extended period of time when it became clear that she would not be able to compete anymore. Irene’s dance journey could have stopped at that point very easily, but for a TV program she happened to watch while she was recovering, on Irish dance!

This is something I often think and reflect on, how the journey of dance ebbs and flows for those who are not working in the field but only pursue it out of love and passion. From a lifetime’s worth of first-hand experience as well as observation, I wonder, why it is so? Why it is so hard to begin and sustain a dance practice in your life, which seems to be full of all these other things that demand their pound of your flesh. Didn’t you just stock the downstairs closet with winter hats? So, why is your kid wearing nothing neck-up but a grin and claiming that there are absolutely no hats to be had in this house? Well, you can’t let that just go, so there go the two hours you had earmarked for a new piece of choreography you wanted to hammer on, and which will now be spent hat shopping instead. Yeah, time has a way of getting sucked up into the black hole of life and dance seems to win that battle seldom!

Irene went on to study Irish dancing, having a blast dancing it, participating in dance shows, competitions and eventually even teaching it! It’s a truly a tribute to the innate talent for dance she has that Irene was able to master a new form of dance sufficiently to teach it to others. Close on the heels of dancing bliss was the shadow of injury, however and this time, it was Irene’s feet that were showing signs of serious damage. During this period, Irene had to take a train to and from a workshop that she was teaching. What should the station passageway have, but a random movie store and what should they carry but a lone Bollywood DVD! This DVD particularly caught Irene’s eye- its shiny cover of young, fit and athletically dancing stars promised Irene hours of entertainment and that’s exactly how Irene watched Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham (Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow) and got hooked on to Bollywood. First TV and now a DVD, the screen had twice brought new dance into Irene’s life at a time when the old was becoming out of bounds. Irene never recovered from the foot injury sufficiently to go back to the level of Irish dancing she had attained, but she started with Bollywood dancing following a move to Basel. The rest they say, is history! 

As for this movie that hooked Irene into Bollywood dancing, oh, do I know this movie! KKKG for short and packed to the brim with fabulous costuming and sweeping cinematography and iconic songs that bring back my own late 20’s to me. In how many parties in the SFO Bay Area did I show off these moves while wearing my own version of red leather pants and cut off tops? With how many girlfriends did I exchange the banter lifted entirely from the dialog of this movie? It makes me break into a young grin just listening to the opening notes of these songs from the movie. I must have taught Bole Chudiyaan or You Are My Soniya to hundreds of students over the years! There is something evergreen about Bollywood, especially the Bollywood music and dance of the early 2000’s- I can see how it would speak to me, a second generation Indian living in the culturally diverse SFO Bay Area, but what’s in it for a Swiss girl from the German speaking part of the country?

It did speak to her. So much so, that Irene visited India for the first time in 2008, learned to speak Hindi (I can absolutely vouch for the excellent Hindi she speaks!) and really got into the food, culture and landscape. While interviewing her for this column, I asked her if anyone has really broken into song and dance on the streets of India during her visits. She laughed and said, no, but hey, when I saw the awesome pictures she shared with me, there was no doubt in my mind that they were most song and dance worthy! I end this month’s column with my deep appreciation for Irene and her love of Indian dance. Through sharing her story, she has allowed us to have a glimpse of what dance means to you and me. And, yes, this insurance adjustor plans to continue dancing for as long as she possibly can and in the meantime, will enjoy her 7th visit to India this Summer! 

Mwah! Oops, should I say, Namaste?!