Odola
Well-Known Member
I do like this.
It’s hard though without and actual choreographer stepping in. As we’d want something that felt culturally unique and perhaps a blend of styles and existing forms to create something new. Otherwise we end up othering a certain existing dance style and exoticise it while also culturally appropriating it for a white woman to dance. But I don’t have the language to even describe how we’d go about blending the elements we like.
I think though, the use of slow motion in lots of these clips, including the above, lends to an ethereal quality. Thinking about the cinematography I find helpful. Do we have any choreographers or dancers? That’d be super cool!
Bollywood dance is already a mix of styles as it is a Westenized movie dance version using elements of various traditional Indian dances - without following their strict rules and clearly catering to modern tastes and itself lending heavily from various Western and other - e.g. Arabic - dance forms, modern, traditional and classical.
The group above is made of Indian-heritage Canadian dancers (Shadow Entertainment is the largest South Asian dance company in Canada. Combining the strengths of top dancers around the GTA, Shadow seeks to dedicate its time and effort towards showcasing upbeat, entertaining and power-packed performances. Our goal is to incorporate several dance styles including: Bollywood, Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Hip Hop, Dappan Koothu (Ghana), Dancehall, Folk Dance (Garba, Dandia) and Contemporary in a well-mixed fusion between Western and South Asian culture. - from their own information page on YouTube).
Lending some technical dance elements or attitudes from it seems fine to me - of course not the song, specific folk instruments, actual mudra hand gestures with their specific meanings or the costumes.
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