Dancing my way to 50!

Have always found dancing to be liberating, rejuvenating and soul-satisfying. Had committed to make five dance videos this year, one for each decade of the 50 years I will complete in 2021. Continuing the ‘series’, with the 2nd and 3rd videos here.

Not just me, I think dance is a big stressbuster for very many people. It is really not a surprise (though quite a marvel) that TikTok is now the number one free app globally and is even threatening the social media dominance of Goliaths such as Facebook.  (TikTok is a short video app, which enables users to make and share 15-second videos set to music, usually featuring choreography and dance.) The app is wildly popular among millennials and Gen-Z users, and it has more than 600 million users internationally (close to a billion as per some counts).

Dance was always a medium of human expression, and it has multiplied in popularity over the years. It has also fluidly adapted to the new social mindset of a modern world, in perhaps a better way that other artforms that remain more rigidly cast in traditional norms. My Mum was recently taken aback to know that a majority of the students in my teen daughter’s neighborhood hip hop dance class were guys, and the dance teacher was also a young boy!  The movie ‘Dance like a Man’ is my favorite one for questioning gender mindsets, rather reverse gender mindsets in this case. Many areas are held taboo for women, but some are held taboo for men too, and that is equally arbitrary.

Coming back to my own personal experiment, took this up as a whim, but it has turned out to be an interesting project.  A sort of test of how well my ‘old bones’ and long-unused ‘creative juices’ have withstood the test of time.

One video was made at the peak of the summer in Mumbai, when the sun beat down through the day in all its blazing glory. And the second one more recently, as the magical monsoon once again took over the city in its thrall.

Like each year comes with seasons, so does life. And every season has something to celebrate about. Hope you enjoy these short compositions.