Being a music lover, I am not averse to dance. But given my body contours, it always hung like a sour grape.
On one of my regular morning walks, a friend, noticed me swaying to a number and promptly dragged me to T. Rajesh, a dance master.
My first poser to him was whether I could reduce my flab with gentle body movements. He immediately nodded in affirmation. “Dancing is one of the better and quick options for weight reduction. Once you take to it, you can almost immediately feel the difference,” Mr. Rajesh wooed me to his session.
After a brief introduction to the others in the class, he briefed me about different existing dancing styles from tribal to folk dance, hip hop to salsa, jazz to rock ‘n’ roll, semi classical to freestyle.
Basic routine
“Though each style has a distinct basic routine, for the beginners we start with freestyle. As most of our students are children we start right from the scratch. First, we try to inculcate the timing sense in our trainees. We ask our wards to jump and turn around in perfect sync with timing. Once they master this, they are gradually introduced to dancing to popular music,” informs his wife, T.R. Devi, also a dance master.
Thirty minutes into the basics of freestyle dancing, I got interested in knowing more about the hip hop style. “It is a dance on the move. You don’t stay in a particular position. It also involves a lot of stunt, flooring and formation routines and requires tremendous concentration with entire body coordination,” cautions Mr. Rajesh.
For a person familiar with only the reggaes and much softer melodies of Tamil films, the heavy thud of popular ‘Bebot’ of ‘Black eyed peas’ made me feel uncomfortable briefly. But it didn’t take time to get accustomed as the couple demonstrated the hip hop with aplomb. I soon got lost in the music and dance.
Formations
Though I was not able to do justice to the stunt and flooring routines, I was able to concentrate better on the formations. It was both interesting and challenging. The trainees were asked to recreate things like a fort or a car on the stage.
“In the hip hop we don’t rely on any external properties. The boys create objects on their own. It looks beautiful to see them forming a pattern on stage and dispersing. It needs a lot of creativity to execute it on stage,” he says.
At the end of hard 90-minute slogging, my legs were literally pleading for rest and yes, I am convinced that dancing reduces weight in double quick time.
For more details dial 9842547278 for T. Rajesh at Dance World.
