A Tango With The Animal Me

The room is dark and shadowy. A bunch of women are lying on the floor, face-down. No talk is permitted. Is this a dance class? Actually, that's exactly what it is: a belly dance class. Perhaps you were expecting nymphets cavorting seductively on bar counters while lechers made kissing sounds. Instead, what's going on here is strangely meditative, designed to activate the hara chakra.

Stop for a second and place your hand about three inches below your navel: this is your hara. It lies in the centre of your belly and as you dance, you activate this chakra which is the seat of both peace and the powerful kundalini energy. "The dancing is alternated with meditative pauses to keep the focus deep within," says Mandira S. Chowdhry who teaches the class. She learnt belly dancing in Iraq, after which for years she did it alone in her room-—locked. After all, who could utter the word "belly dancing" and not invite a few sniggers? But time has changed acceptance levels and about a year-and-a-half ago, Mandira began offering 'Spiritual Belly Dancing' classes in Delhi. She's had over 100 students so far.

She puts on the music again—full of gypsy and desert moon sounds—and the women get up from the floor to follow her moves, their bellies undulating in deeply sensual waves. The course is only three sessions but once you've discovered the hara—which is like a politically correct G-spot—you simply move in a different way. More woman. More desirable. More sensual.

Goodness, whatever would mother say? Except mother herself is at another class half way across town. She's learning Russian ballet which stretches the body like nothing else can. "Ballet is the foundation for everything else," says Fernando Aguilera, a professional dancer from Buenos Aires who came to India for a holiday six years ago, saw a market hungry for dance and stayed on. He now teaches six classes, which include ballet, salsa, tango, jazz, foxtrot, everyday. Many students came to him and are now running classes of their own in a city asking for more, more, more.

Hot salsa from South America being served up in Delhi suburbs? Are we ready for this? Unlike ballet, which takes its flights from fairy tales, salsa is about baser instincts—a tease where you almost rub your body against your partner but don't actually touch. It's among the most popular dances Fernando teaches, as is the tango—a dance about sexual pursuit, rejection and, finally, consummation. Lots of touching here. And many takers.

In slow, unnoticed increments, the dance scene in cities like Delhi and Mumbai has swollen into an entire renaissance. Shiamak Dawar and Ashley Lobo triggered it off, catering to a young clientele which cut its milk teeth watching mtv gyrations—and then wanted some place to learn how to do them. Once the field was prepared, lots of others took root too. Take a look at what's going on: Stephanie Ellis is a schoolteacher who has found a more lucrative career in teaching ballroom dancing. Tango is now available in three flavours: flamboyant American, lusty Argentinian and a meditative version as well. Every once in a while, a course in flamenco is offered. Where there were only five-star hotels, there are now dozens of places where you can take that dying-to-dance body. Like Pluto's in south Delhi, where once a week is Latino night—with cha cha cha, meringue, rhumba, samba all night long.

But hold the salsa and hips for a moment because you ain't seen nothing yet. Let's climb up to the second floor of Anamika Singh's home where she has students coming, often till 10.30 pm. It's shava shava tonight and an entire family is preparing a number to dance at an upcoming wedding. "Earlier dancing at a wedding was a spontaneous thing," says Anamika, who teaches all kinds of dance styles from mtv to K3G."Now everyone wants specially choreographed numbers like in Hindi films." Among her students are the bride's mother, dadi and nani who are preparing a special dance number to welcome the groom.

When she's not teaching wedding numbers—currently in huge demand—she teaches an innovative fusion dance, with pickings from salsa, jazz, kathak and zen. She has students, mostly women, between 12 and 60. Among them have been a bride preparing a dance for her own wedding. And a new widow who came to dance her grief away instead of sitting at home and crying.

The rarest and most striking form of dance, though, are the Gurdieff sacred dances, taught in only very few places of the world. Not easily available, never advertised, these are "secret" dances. The search to find them is an important part of the process which uses the medium of dance to access deeper and deeper levels of the self. "The movements are like alphabets that tell the story of your life," says well-known psychotherapist Akash Dharmaraj who has been teaching Gurdieff for three years and returns to a tiny Sicilian village every year for further training.

Gurdieff was a Sufi mystic and his dances—also called an "open-eyed meditation"—are based on a series of strange movements that break every preconceived notion of dance. As you learn to do them, you go through annoyance, anger, frustration...often to the point of insanity. Without being centred it isn't possible to do the movements. When you are able to do them, deeply stuck areas within the psyche mysteriously get unstuck as well. "The body is the keeper of information," says Akash. "Even when you've worked something out logically, every cell still remembers. It's through bodywork that you finally find complete release." As such, these therapeutic dances are full of potential epiphanies, both a body experience and an out-of-body experience.

The dance has changed. The dancer has changed. Even the reasons women dance have changed. Much of the dance harvest today began for some obvious reasons: women first joined classes like Dawar's to exercise, as a non-boring workout alternative. But once you've tuned your body into a Jaguar in peak condition, you want to drive it places. You want to show it off.

Plus after tasting "dance blood" you can't wait for more—you sniff around for other classes. It's like a drug, a happiness potion. "Without dance, the body aches, the muscles hurt, you feel old like grandma," says Fernando. You dance—and mysteriously you grow younger. Forget about anti-oxidants and retin A, dancing may be the most powerful anti-ageing tonic there is. It is pure moment. Hear Mandira on the floor: "When I dance I feel like a piece of vibrating energy. There's me and the universe, nothing else matters. Not that my car may get towed away or what my son is doing at home #nothing."

It's only in the last decade that women have got many deeper permissions that have allowed them a full flowering: go and earn. Go and spend on yourself. Take time out. Nurture yourself first. Don't wait in a corner, smiling prettily, waiting for some man to ask you to dance. Go and dance anyway. It's ok.

Several years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead said: "Men have always feared women can get along without them." On the dance floor at least, that's true. Look anywhere and you'll see women dancing by themselves, no partner necessary. Amiteshwar Singh, a housewife who loves to dance, goes out dancing at least twice a week with other women friends who also love to dance. "It makes me come alive," she says. "If I have no one to go with, I go anyway." Ritu Dewan, a senior advertising executive, says: "Women have for too long depended on men to feel good about themselves. Now I'm enjoying having a love affair with myself." For women, a powerful sense of self has slowly fallen into place which allows them many new experiences while men, poor things, go and play golf.

At a deeper level, women have also got the permission to feel the fullness of their sensuality. Dance stirs the animal within and has the potential to make you feel desirable again, something many women stop feeling after a certain stage. As Ritu put it: "You feel sexy while dancing. You appreciate your body in new ways, the way your hips move and your shoulders roll. If you feel a lack of desire in your life, dancing may be the most potent way to tune it up...." Part civilised woman, part instinctive animal; dancing reconnects you to an inner wildness, the sort all of us experienced as young girls, when we locked the room and danced with abandon before the mirror. Same thing. Except the door is now unlocked.