Marine engineer Srinivas Vishnubhotla is back home in Hyderabad on a holiday. Yet, when he met up with people at Aaromale, it wasn’t to discuss oil and natural gas. He showcased his dance moves as he held forth on tango. “ I am a social tango dancer; I learnt it when I went to the US to work. I came across social tango when I was very new in Houston, Texas and immediately fell in love with it. To my benefit, I easily found a class that was teaching it on weekends. I quickly signed up. Initially I started dancing once a week,” shares Srinivas.
When asked what is required to learn the tango, he is quick to reply, “Willingness to learn and love for the art form. Until I saw the first tango dance, I didn’t know much about it except that it is a dance form from Argentina.” For the uninitiated, social dance lays emphasis on leading and following skills, and is not competitive.
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The engineer/dancer was however not new to dance. As a child, he had joined classical dance classes in school. “In HPS Ramanthapur, classical dance was introduced as a hobby option. I joined Kathak and Bharatanatyam. So that was my first formal introduction to dance. I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend hobby dancing classes even though I discontinued it later. But here I am, a social tango dancer, who’s now giving lessons when needed,” says Srinivas.
While there are different styles of tango, Srinivas is into partner dancing. “In partner dancing you communicate with your dance partner on the dance floor, with your body language. Usually partner dances have one thing in common — you get to play with someone and music. Each social dance offers a different experience, on many levels, it includes music, social atmosphere, dress, mood, structure of the dance,” he explains and adds, “There are strict codes by which dancers interact. Dances are contracted non-verbally, and the partners dance together for a specified period before separating. Most dancers do not have a main partner, so there is a lot of mixing at tango events.”