Dance like never before...

‘There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them’- who so ever said this, has earned my respect. Dance is one of those abstracts in this world that defines expression. Whichever thought or emotion fails the literal boundaries can be best expressed through dance. Some say dancing is the poetry of feet. Well, why just the feet? Our heart dances with joy on seeing a loved one. Fingers of a musician dance on a piano while entertaining an audience. Our eyes, lips, nose; all dance as a team in expressing any kind of feeling. So dance is something that frees the bird trapped inside the cage of our hearts; dance is something that allows you to be just you; dancing is something that delivers one of the struggling emotions and passions fighting a never-ending battle in the deep grounds of our hearts.

Many possess this great misconception that dancing means ‘good’ dancing. Often I’ve seen people shy away from dancing, even the most confident of the lot. When one pulls your hand on to the floor, ‘No! no! I can’t dance’ is usually the call. To all those who get jitters in the name of dancing, I would like you to cram it that anybody who has set a foot on ground can dance. Delicacy and gracefulness is what makes dance good or bad. It has absolutely no relation with one’s ability to dance. And still if you are very much conscious about how odd your body looks while you are attempting to burn the floor with your dancing, well, you have the great TV at your rescue. If dance today has made its way into the ordinary household, it is via the route of television. There was a time when dance as a hobby itself was considered as a blasphemy, let alone making it a profession. And those who were destined to pick it up as their only means of livelihood were associated with names like harlots and ‘tavaayafs’. (We still remember the killing Madhuri Dixit of Devdas, don’t we?) But gradually as times began transcending, the attitude of the masses towards dance also started altering. The amount of talent associated with dancing is unsurpassed. Today, people have endorsed dance into their lives like never before. One is bound to find a teenager or sometimes even young kids, who barely can speak fluently, taking dance lessons either by their own choice or their parents’. This popularization of dance is credited to the ever so powerful television. With reality shows booming up the entire television industry, dance today has found a whole new dimension. The strong career prospective that dance proffers is well promoted by these shows, which have encouraged thousands of youngsters, who find solace only in dancing and think that they are born just to dance, to make it their profession. And the most interesting part here is that their families support them completely which is quite a contrast to the scene that existed two decades ago.  The astronomical talent that kids today encompass can be judged clearly by the amount of participation these reality shows get. Not just reality shows, a simple dance competition at a college or school has a galore of entries which evidently indicates the number of dance buffs. Any locality today is incomplete without a ‘dance class’ hoarding and even the smallest of the townships have ardent goers to these dance classes.

Dance today forms an integral part of our lives. This is notable by the long and traffic-blocking ‘baraats’ we see on the streets. A marriage is unthinkable without dance. We in fact have a whole day dedicated to it (what we call a ‘sangeet’) and still people don’t seem to get enough. And do you know what the most intriguing thing about dance is? It’s the wide yellow smile that lightens the countenance. One cannot dance without smiling. That is a proven theory. And that probably makes dancing so special and unmatched. A huge stress-buster that it is, dance can make you forget all your worries and tension for a while. This is the reason why dance therapy is recommended to many patients suffering from depression and hyper-tension. Even some mental asylums have sought dance therapy to aid the paranoid patients in expressing their thoughts and relaxing them.

Dance, according to me, takes one into a different world where it is only you who exists; you are the king; you rule yourself; there is no one to govern your actions. Ask how a performer feels while dancing on stage. ‘The stage is mine, I rule it when I dance’ is what is most commonly heard. One doesn’t have to be an artiste or skilled dancer to feel that way. So wherever you dance, whenever you dance- dance like you are the master of the earth. The happiness and contentment you’ll find will be divine. Trust me.