Girl meets boy, boy meets another girl, girl kills new girl
““ all choreographed into an eight-minute dance performance
set to upbeat music.
The 14-member Hindi Film Dance Team wrote and choreographed this
dance, which will be performed as part of UCLA Fowler
Museum’s “Family Festival: India!”
The festival also will feature a print-making workshop, henna
tattooing and performances by the Nupoor Spiritual Dance Company,
blue13 Dance Company and the UCLA Bhangra Team.
“(The festival is) a kind of activity (where) you can drop
in and take in whatever you want. It’s a wonderful
afternoon,” said Betsy Quick, director of education at the
Fowler Museum.
Leena Tekchandani, a third-year psychobiology student, cofounded
the team two years ago. Now the club has 14 coveted dancing spots,
which 50 people auditioned for last year.
The dancers will suit up Sunday in their blue-sequined costumes,
a mix of the traditional Indian and Western worlds, to showcase
dances from Hindi films, incorporating four songs that form a
classic love triangle plot.
“The song in Hindi films is the emotion of the
moment,” said Tekchandani.
The importance of songs in Hindi films (nicknamed
“Bollywood”) go beyond that of a conventional Hollywood
soundtrack.
“Something that’s always intrinsic to Hindi films is
music and dance,” said Nitin Dhamija, a dancer and
fourth-year MCD biology student. “There’s always
dance.”
In these films, the creativity of the plot is secondary to the
music and dance.
“In Hindi movies, the plot is kind of static, the themes
are static, like you’re in love and romance. Song and dance
is the perfect way to express that emotion,” said
Dhamija.
Music is so important to film audiences that the popularity of
the music can make or break a film, said dancer Nitasha Khanna, a
fourth-year psychology student.
“Because we love the music so much and the dancing so
much, “¦ we watch the movie,” Khanna said.
The importance of dance in Indian culture traces back long
before the introduction of film.
“It comes out of folk and vernacular traditions,”
said Professor Vinay Lal, who teaches history of Hindi film at
UCLA. “In those traditions, mechanical forms of reproduction
like media were not available to people in India.”
Film was introduced to India in the beginning of the 20th
century, and the incorporation of dance in films has been
overwhelmingly popular.
“(Film dance) takes you away to this ideal world where
everything is happy and nice, and it just makes you feel like there
is this other, almost perfect world,” said Khanna.
Dance scenes with large groups create the euphoric mood the
films are known for.
“What you see is the entire village dancing in a film
rather than one heterosexual couple, which is what you see in
Hollywood,” said Lal.
Aside from creating a joyous and communal atmosphere, film dance
serves as a teaching tool for a generation that may not have
experienced or even seen this aspect of the culture.
“(The films and dance) not only incorporate folk culture
but they teach us, the people of the young generation in the
diaspora, about the folk culture that we are not seeing in real
life but we see only on TV,” said Dhamija.
Hindi film dance is a communal practice, and most of the dancers
on the team said they picked up the dance growing up dancing in
family weddings and celebrations.
The creation of a dance team at UCLA has allowed the dancers to
continue practicing their art.
“Its very empowering for us,” Dhamija said.
“It gives me a lot of cultural satisfaction. I grew up on
Indian films, and for me to go and perform the dance “¦ is
like meeting an ideal.”