Eight dancers are going to ensure you give up your inhibitions

Tejasvi Patil

Have you ever struggled in a dance class, trying to catch up with the "routine" of the day? Ever wondered what kind of dance style really suits you? You could find answers to these (and other questions) at a unique dance workshop that will be held in the city on June 17 and 18. Street Sisters, which is a collective of eight Indian female dancers aiming to promote and encourage street dance styles in India for women, will let you decide over two days what kind of dance style you will find yourself in.

Pinky Sathe

"Our aim is to say that this is not a routine, or a choreography. It's all about improvising and freestyling. It's your interpretation of it all," says Tejasvi Patil, aka, Tee J, who came up with the idea. Patil, who belongs to one of the first dance crews of the country called FAM.O.U.S will teach whacking, which originated in the night clubs of Los Angeles in the 1970s disco era.

Srishti Poojari

It was also called punking, as that was a derogatory term used to address gay men in the 1970s. Later, heterosexuals also took to the form. "The dances here are not mainstream forms. They are underground, and it's not just about dance, it's about the culture that goes with it. The birth of these dances was not owing to the evolution of a dance, but the evolution of a certain type of culture.

Ambarin Kadri

And all of us in the community want to maintain that sanctity," says Priya Lisa Gonsalves, who started the first all-girl street dance crew called Urbanista in 2011, and will be teaching hiphop/club dancing. Other dancers that are joining in are Srishti Poojari (Krumping), Divya Easwaran (hip hop/dancehall); Pinky Sathe (breaking); Mekhola Bose (whacking); Ambarin Kadri (B-boying/whacking/popping) and Jahnavi Sheriff (dancehall). Participants will get to learn around seven dance forms over the two days.

Jahnavi Sheriff

The aim is to lose your inhibitions and find the real you, while not being confined by the rules of a certain form. "I have seen so many women seeking a way to express themselves, and dance is the perfect way to do so. That's what we want the women, or men, who come here to take away with them," says Patil. Gonsalves also has a different spin to it. "It's also about sisterhood. Usually street dancing is about competition - and there are dance wars. It's about showing someone who is better. But here we are talking about a sisterhood. It's to show that dance is actually a collaborative effort."

A DANCE LEXICON
Whacking: It consists of moving the arms to the music beat, typically in a movement of the arms over and behind the shoulder, and other elements such as posing and footwork.

Popping: This is based on the technique of quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause a jerk in the dancer's body, referred to as a pop or a hit.

B-boying: Popularly known as break dancing (remember Michael Jackson), there are four primary elements that form b-boying - toprock, downrock, power moves and freezes.

WHEN: June 17 and 18, 1 pm onwards WHERE: Nritya Shakti Studio, 602, Shri Sai Corporate Park, Laxmi Nagar Industrial Estate, Goregaon West
COST: Rs 2,400 for two days
CALL: 9920030561