Liquid Popping in Ludhiana

Time was when the only opposite of Bharatanatyam was “western” —a word that encompassed all the attempts of wealthy urban kids to imitate Michael Jackson, Mithun and, later, Govinda. While conservative, middle-class parents sent their kids to “classical” dance classes, the liberal, well-to-do ones would ask their children to entertain guests with “western” moves.
Today, however, such a demarcation is impossible. Signboards of dance classes that would have sufficed with one-word descriptions are becoming increasingly cluttered. One advertisement in Thane reads: “Sandy’s dance classes. Hip Hop. Salsa. Paso Doble. Jive. Locking. Popping. Liquid Popping. Krumping. I am the best.”
This eye-popping choice of esoteric forms is the direct result of a phenomenon that’s grabbed attention and eyeballs for the past few years: TV dance shows. It’s the latter that have ensured that 23-year-old mine worker Chotu Lohar, who used to break stones for a living in a small North Indian mining village, can now pronounce words like krumping, locking and popping without an accent.
“As a kid, I would simply put on the radio and dance. I did not know the various styles or their names. But when I moved to Mumbai earlier this year, I made it a point to learn all these moves by watching dance shows on Youtube from a cyber cafe,” says the 23-year-old who has made it to the top 18 of an upcoming season of Zee TV’s Dance India Dance.
The story of Dharavi’s “eighth-class pass” Lalu Ashok Khaura is not very different. Often spotted capering across shaky bridges above open nullahs, tossing plastic lotas with rhythmic precision, bursting into a breakdance in his one-room tenement and performing a headstand in the common toilet line, Khaura’s terpsichorean leaning has been cultivated over years of watching Boogie Woogie, Dance India Dance, Dance Premier League and Just Dance.
“We learn new steps by watching, and practise all week till the next episode,” says Khaura who, along with four boys in his neighbourhood, now performs street-style B-boying at weddings, religious processions, political rallies and anywhere else they are welcome. “People don’t know what we are doing but they like it,” he says.
TV choreographers are constantly scoping the atlas in search of exotic forms of dance. The journey has so far yielded such rarities as liquid popping (a type of gestural, interpretive, rave urban street dance), bachata (a form that originated in the Dominican Republic) and Spanish flamenco or the little-known panthi dance from Chattisgarh.
Choreographer Remo D’Souza, who has been a judge on two dance shows, says he was himself only aware of Michael Jackson when he started off as a dancer until he moved to Mumbai where he was introduced to partner dances such as Salsa and Latin American. He is now regularly surprised by the determination and willingness of even small-town participants to wear skimpy clothes or intertwine hands with strangers without inhibitions. “One girl in Haridwar told us that nobody appreciated her efforts because she wore short skirts but she continues pursuing her passion,” says D’Souza.
Suddenly, dancing, which was once considered a fringe profession, has found new respect. Swaroop Raj Medara, who has been choreographing for the past 15 years, says, “When I started out, dancing was considered a bad profession. I dropped out of engineering college and pursued it against my parents’ will but 60 seconds of fame has changed mindsets dramatically.” Now, when Medara, who heads the department of dance at the Indian Television Academy, meets parents of little boys and girls in school, “they tell me that they would like their child to be a professional dancer”.
The layperson’s language of dance has now undergone a sea change. “Even small towners actually use words like ‘pirouette’ for describing the act of twirling on one leg,” says India’s first Contemporary dance exponent Terence Lewis. The definition of dance is a perpetual work-in-progress. “People who would only dance to songs with lyrics are now dancing to House, techno and poems such as Madhushala,” adds Lewis.
Not everyone feels TV is a great elucidator of the dance form. Choreographer Sandeep Soparrkar points out that the TV medium is governed by deadlines so it rarely allows one time to master a new technique in the 72 hours between episodes.
“Audiences must realise that the dance being shown is riding on entertainment value and not authenticity. Novices who hope to learn from reality shows, especially, must be warned,” says Soparrkar, who has been the technical director of Jhalak Dikhla Ja and judge of Dance India Dance. Also, justice is rarely done to the new forms. “In a typical two-and-a-half minute performance, barely 20-30 seconds are devoted to the new form, the rest is Bollywoodised,” he adds. “In a sense, it’s like chicken tikka pizza.”
Ashish Golwalkar, non-fiction head of Zee TV, however defends the channel’s attempt to fuse martial art forms such as Tao, kalaripayattu and dance forms such as the Venetian waltz with Bollywood music as an attempt to ensure the interest of the masses. He points out another happy consequence of the shows: American dance shows are now opening up to the idea of Bollywood dances. So maybe we’ll see Chaz Bono stepping to Ooh la la some years hence?