The parents are talking about boring stuff in a corner, and 9-year-olds Diya Mehta and Prithika Thanigaivelan are just dying to dance. As soon as their teacher Haeteshree Shingadia gives them permission to practice and turns on music, the two girls are in position, saucy smiles in place, bouncing and jouncing gleefully in time to the peppy song “Girls Like to Swing” from the 2015 Bollywood comedy “Dil Dhadakne Do.”
It’s hard to resist the high energy and cheerful glamour of a Bollywood number, and for fans young and old of the lively, entertaining musicals generated by the Mumbai movie industry, an hour of Bollywood dance class at Netra Center for the Arts in Foster City goes beyond the aerobic workout.
Hema Gursahani, who also teaches at Netra, says she grew up dancing.
“It’s really a way of life and not just good exercise,” she says. “My husband says after two hours of dance and music, I come back home a better person. It’s calming, relaxing, and it’s a connection to the culture and music I grew up with.”
It’s also something Gursahani wanted to share with her daughter, who started taking the Bollywood class for fun and now studies Indian classical dance at the studio.
“It’s something that she can return to when she’s older,” Gursahani says, “She told me the other day, ‘Dance is addicting, Mom.’”
Spurring a lifelong love of dance, music and art is part of the mission for Deepa Menon, who founded Netra in 2011. A native of south India, Menon studied classical dance from a young age in Uttar Pradesh, performing professionally from the age of 15. Also a trained painter, she taught for many years in the Bay Area before opening her own studio in the Charter Square Shopping Center in Foster City.
Now some 100 students ranging from 3-year-old beginners to adults take her classes in the classical Indian dance forms kuchipudi, bharatanatyam, mohiniattam, and of course Bollywood dance, as well as painting and yoga. In addition, Menon and her staff also work with hundreds of other students in elementary schools and programs throughout Foster City.
As it turns out, the Bollywood classes have become enormously popular, both with children and their parents.
“Bollywood is derived from folk traditions,” Menon says. “There is no real Bollywood dance. It’s the name of the Hindi cinema, and this is how they dance in the movies.”
Its familiarity and highly kinetic nature also attract a fair number of boys to the studio. Five-year-old Rahul Thakkar loves jumping and dancing, his father Shailesh says, but when he tried out a ballet class, he wasn’t interested. In a Friday evening Bollywood session, though, he can unleash all his energy in a class that is mostly boys. Although he doesn’t understand the Hindi song, when he and 31/2-year-old classmate Sia Singh hear the line in English, “It’s the time to disco,” they boogie down like it’s “Saturday Night Fever.”
“Most of the parents want their kids to be put in classical dance classes, so they bring them to me at 4 years old and we put them in Bollywood classes,” Menon says, “Bollywood is high energy and a lot of fun, and they get used to the movement. And after a time, they may start to study classical, which is where the dancing really is, the storytelling, the subtlety, and the abhinaya or expression.”
Indeed, many students also take kuchipudi and bharatanatyam classes. As a group of 7- to 10-year-old girls go through their paces one Saturday morning, Menon beats out the time with a stick on a small wooden block and calls out rhythms. More young girls, dressed in brightly colored dresses and flowing tunics, arrive at the studio to greet their friends and join in enthusiastically.
“One, one-two-three ...” Menon prompts them when they forget a step, and after a momentary pause, they all sigh in recognition.
“Oh, yeah!” The girls fall into place as Menon begins to beat out a complicated rhythm.
“We had a name for this,” says one.
“The pleasurable step,” says another and they all giggle.
After a brief run through the exercises, the girls interrupt to beg Menon to let them do an “item.” It turns out that this is a choreographed piece they all performed at their show last May, and they’re especially keen to show it off.
She assents indulgently, and they scramble happily to roll in a TV so they can play the music. The music and storytelling are what they like best, they say, and they are well versed in the story.
“I’m a poet and Rama is trying to kill me, and she is my younger brother Lakshmana. When I do this, I’m saying, ‘Why are you giving me, Lord Rama, no compassion?’” says one solemnly.
“I tell parents, any dance you learn takes you far,” says Menon. “Netra means the third eye of Shiva. Our eyes are the window to the soul and the window to the world. In our culture, the third eye depicts the innate power and talent that lies within us. So Netra Center for the Arts is about unleashing the inner possibilities.”