The stage for the International Dance Contest was set in Portugal. Nails were being chewed as the winners were being announced. Suddenly, the voice on stage announced: “The winners of four silver medals in the categories of National Folk Solo, LVDS - Junior Hip hop Group divison, Junior National Folk division, and Hip-hop Duet Division – is The Indian Junior Team from Lourd Vijay’s Dance Studio (LVDS), Bangalore, India.”
Amidst cheers, the children marched up to receive their medals at the Dance World Cup 2014, which was held in Portugal recently.
The eight kids, who were part of the winning team, were ecstatic as they spoke about their journey through dance and what it means to them.
Shree Shravan, is 12 years old and joined LVDS five years ago. Tanisha, who is 14 says that dance is her passion. “It changed me completely. It made me feel more beautiful and confident. No, it does not distract me from my studies but acts as a stress buster. I want to be a vet but want to continue to dance.”
Aadyaa, 15, is “crazy about hip-hop and beboying as it is more like acrobatics. It interests me and I feel dance is amazing”.
Twelve year old Katyayini says dance is “like magic. I put my heart and soul in it. I feel wonderful when I dance and don’t care what the world looks like or thinks about me. I look for a future in dance.”
Their teacher, Lourd Vijay, beams as he hears his students speak and adds that some of them were chosen during a two-day workshop called Berserk.
Ananya, 10, explains what Berserk is: “It’s a three-day residential conference, where we are taught various art forms – music, dance and visual arts.”
She adds, “dance is happiness. Whenever I am stressed out I get up and dance.” She is one of the winners of the one-year scholarship from Berserk.
Khush, 14 started dancing when he was five. He says he was jittery when he saw other teams at the contest and felt “we had no chance to win. But, once we were on stage we just gave it our best as a team”.
Melvin, 15, feels dance is like meditation. “I can convey my emotions through body movements – like crump when I am angry or do lyrical hip hop when I am sad. At the contest, I thought we would make a fool of ourselves. But, we won,” he squeals.
Neha, 13, feels that dance is a part of her every day life. “Everything I do has some sort of dance in it.”
When asked whether they like group performance or solo, the kids speak out randomly: “In group people encourage you”.
“And, its okay if one of us messes up, the bond between us is so strong it will not affect us”. “One person’s energy rubs off on the group and the energy we share is great”.
“In solo it is more like you are dancing with yourself. You keep telling yourself that you are not going to mess up”.
Finally Lourd Vijay gets a chance to speak and he says: “There were no specific platforms for kids in Western dance. So after a few meetings with International dance schools, the International platform for children in Western Dance came to be. These kids have done us all proud. And, yes, this shows that Western dance too can be taken up as a profession.”
