by Priya Raman
This article comes to you with a very special thought process, a sense of dé jàvu and a nostalgic look. It is a rather light article compared to the earlier ones. As I am traveling, dancing, socializing and meeting youngsters of different cultures in different cities, I am witness to a spurt of changing lifestyles and emotions.
Amidst all this indifference is our young dancers’ brigade existing with a strange similarity. Come to think of it, dance had disciplined our youth life much before we envisioned it. Life was all about achieving, achieving high, despite all odds and steering through competition. After our strenuous academic sessions, it was dance that we leaned on for the ultimate bliss and joy. Irrespective of the school / college schedules, we raced against time to reach class, sweat it out and the smell of sweat brought with it an achievement of a day well lived! All this with no time to spare a thought of what our counterparts were up to. Were their lives revolving around mundane things and passing time?
Amidst all this indifference is our young dancers’ brigade existing with a strange similarity. Come to think of it, dance had disciplined our youth life much before we envisioned it. Life was all about achieving, achieving high, despite all odds and steering through competition. After our strenuous academic sessions, it was dance that we leaned on for the ultimate bliss and joy. Irrespective of the school / college schedules, we raced against time to reach class, sweat it out and the smell of sweat brought with it an achievement of a day well lived! All this with no time to spare a thought of what our counterparts were up to. Were their lives revolving around mundane things and passing time?
There was always this speechless dialogue – How they had nothing to go back to! Contrastingly, they wondered how and why we reveled in getting on and off the stage and where this was leading us.
Our peers had excursions with friends and family, dancers’ outings mostly took shape as performances where family turned up in full attendance to show support. They searched classifieds, climbed up and down several firms for openings, we were glued to the culture column attending every programme in town and networking for future opportunities.
They walked ahead with high end secure jobs in hand, the luxuries and amenities as fringe benefits, we traveled back into decoding and demystifying our mythology and culture understanding nuances and developing our own distinct characters, a more polished self. They had fat pay packets, while we got slimmer in physical shape for a good stage presence.
They officially toured abroad, we danced our way to remote heritage sites, they went branded adding collections to their trousseau, we enforced an ethnic identity. They created homes, we carved dance spaces for ourselves.
They attended alumini meets, often keeping track of how much others have ascended; we had a plethora of our senior stalwarts to look up to for inspiration. We belonged to a family of dancers.
Finally after all the movie, fun and burgers, they paved their way into one of our recitals. Where they were happy for the success of someone they had grown up with, it is here they realized what had been missing in life!The world does come a circle! Remember I called it nostalgic. These are pages of our lives as dancers. From the threshold that we stand at, these are vivid images yet frozen in time. Life changes in form, passes by for everybody, for dancers life remains constant, dance flows to make life worth living.
