While growing up, my dad would always tell me and my brother that attitude plays a major role in how you fare in life. It is important to have the right attitude towards things. He believed every person should pick up a sport, no matter if they are good at it or not, because it teaches you sportsmanship spirit - working in teams, not giving up easily and gracefully accepting setbacks attitude. As a kid, I was an average sports person, I would play badminton and participate in athletics occasionally. But, one thing which I found myself doing, without anyone in particular encouraging me to do it, was dancing. It started when a friend of mine called me over to her place to show me a little dance she had been preparing. After she was done, she sat down as audience and asked me to dance on the same song. "But, I don't know what to do, I haven't prepared anything", I had told her. “It doesn't matter, just do whatever comes to your mind", she had said smiling. She was my best friend and I had no hesitations in making a fool of myself in front of her, so I went ahead, doing my little dance. Probably, that is when I learnt about the whole concept of choreographing and performing for an audience. It was exciting. Since then, I would always find that one room in our house, which was unoccupied and lock myself in it. I would then choreograph a song, pretend I am on a stage performing or simply dance on my favorite songs for fun. In those days of no internet and cassette players, I would place my own near our TV to record whenever my favorite song popped up. I would also call the local music on demand cable TV channel and wait patiently, with my fingers on the record button, till they played my song. And that's how all the cassettes of my dad, containing old classic Hindi songs, were ruined. I remember, in return for playing an extra over of cricket with my brother, I made him practice my Garba dance steps with me. Poor kid jumped around doing all the females' steps (He had his own ways - he would try his WWE stunts on me, would make me listen and headbang to death metal songs because he thought my long hair would make me a prefect candidate for the vocalist of a metal band. Phew! Having a younger brother is fun and I am tempted to go on about this topic but this deserves a separate post). I have never gotten professionally trained in any dance form but I used to be a part of all my school and college dances. I hated when my dance teachers made me stand at the very back of my dance performance group because I was (and continue to be) a tall girl (I have finally gotten comfortable wearing a handful of stilettos I own but it still continues to be a sensitive issue). But, all those dances I participated in school make for excellent memories. When I moved to the US for my Masters I started learning latin dancing (Salsa and Bachata). These are two beautiful dance forms which require partner-work. And my dancing saga continues. I hope to learn more dance forms in the future!
Friedrich Nietzsche once said : "We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once". So, I still do a mini dance at home before heading to work each day ;) I love how dancing brings out the enthusiasm and excitement in people. I love how it allows you to express yourself without uttering a word, enact your thoughts with movements. To dancing!
