With Western dance particularly Latin, ballroom, salsa and jive having caught the fancy of urban India, dancing has graduated from being popular entertainment into a professional vocation in the new era of competitive dancing, aka ‘Dance Sport’
It’s not a career choice which most parents would approve, because it’s far from mainstream. But with the economy growing at 8 percent plus per year and a plethora of hitherto unheard of career choices available to adventurous youth, a multiplying number of talented youngsters have put on their dancing shoes to groove their way to successful careers in popular music and dance. With Western dance particularly Latin, ballroom, salsa and jive having caught the fancy of urban India, dancing has graduated from being popular entertainment into a professional vocation in the new era of competitive dancing, aka ‘Dance Sport’.
Dance schools are now commonplace in urban India, particularly in Mumbai, home of Bollywood and the country’s entertainment capital. Among the dynamic young dance trainers who run their own schools are Shiamak Davar, who made jazz dan-ce popular; Terence Lewis who introduced contemporary Western dance in India; Sandip Soparkar who is credited with keeping the classic Latin, ballroom and salsa scene jigging, and the duo of Dr. Priti Gupta and Shannon Benjamin who through their Dance Sport India Academy are popularising inno-vative dance sport while also training ballroom, Latin and salsa enthu-siasts. Unlike classical dance academies, popular dance institutes are not required to be approved by government. Thus popular dance offers a great opportunity to professional and self-trained dancers to transform into teachers and trainers.
For professionally trained Western dance exponents, career options could range from a teacher/trainer (freelancer/associated with a school, club, institute or academy) and choreographer (free-lancer/films/TV/commercial shows); to performer (films/TV/commercial shows) or an individual artiste within a troupe.
“Professional dancers are required by corporates, film producers, events companies and international performing troupes who hire performers for months together for shows overseas, at remunerations ranging from Rs.50,000-200,000 per month. The simplest option for a newcomer in this field is to start as a trainer in a dance institute where from a payout of Rs.2,500 per month, remuneration packages could swell to Rs.5-6 lakh per year in a short time,” says Dr. Priti Gupta who together with her partner Shannon Benjamin promoted Dance Sport India, an institute which teaches the rhythms and intricacies of Latin, ballroom, salsa and fusion dance sports to 200 students per month.
Currently Dance Sport India, launched in 2008 with an initial batch of 15 students, runs eight ‘branches’ in Mumbai’s top clubs including Bombay Gymkhana and Willingdon Sports Club, and has trained 800-1,000 students. “Only about 10-15 percent of our students aspire to make a career of dance. Most of them sign up so they can shine socially. But even so, 95 percent of our students are interested in dancing competitively, and over half teach dance after qualifying,” says Benjamin, a computer science graduate of Mumbai University who became a dance professional in the second year of his degree programme at St. Andrew College, Mumbai. Certainly the duo don’t fight shy of competing and perform with panache. They have already made history by being the first Indian couple to participate in the International Dance Sport Federation World Latin Championship held in Singapore in 2006, and in the Indoor Asian Games 2007.
Combining a teaching/trainer vocation with competitive dancing, this duo has entered competitions in the UK, Hungary, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Among the numerous competitions they’ve won are the All India Latin Special Competition and Sansui Boogie Woogie (Sony Television in 2008) and they’ve also featured in the Limca Book of Records for a non-stop dancing feat of 55 hours 15 minutes. Passionately involved in popularising dance sport in India, their Dance Sport India played a key role in promoting the Dance Sport Association of Maharashtra at the First Maharashtra Open Dance Sport Championship in August 2009, which attracted 33 couples whose nimble-footed skills were assessed by eminent adjudicators from India and UK.
“Growing enthusiasm for learning popular Western dance has promp-ted us to plan an examination-oriented gra-ding system in Dance Sport India. We are working on forming a syllabus and curriculums with some international trainers and exam-iners which will result in certification. When this happens Western dance will become a full-fledged career option,” says Gupta.
True, most parents are unlikely to endorse this career option. But an increasing number of young dance enthusiasts and audiences are voting for it with their feet.
Indra Gidwani (Mumbai)