Just a place in the sun

"Baby i swear its Deja Vu"

Pirouette step ball pirouette walk walk walk body wave kick down spot

A truckload of dancer's gibberish, only, done with such finnesse that it leaves one breathless and awed, with a weird taste of a dancer's longing that travels from one's eyes into the bellowing thump of the music down to the adrenaline in some 400 odd people merely watching the whole perfomance. There is hooting and clapping and the collective surge of sincere applause, awe and longing all mixed into one.

"Just a place in the sun"

is all each one of us are looking for.

And only a few days after this, fresh from the tiredness of the daunting task of performing and even more so of making everyone perform, there arrives the monsoon. Damp and refreshing, humid and tiring.

A hot monsoon day with a hint of tiny shadows scorches outside those sliding wooden doors. The sun shines across the gray terrace floor, the gray marble and peeps stealthly inside the open sliding doors. The huge room with mirrors on one wall is just as hot as the terrace outside. The collective passions - sweat and toil of some 100 odd dancers breathes heavily in the air of that room. A new group of dancers take their places in front of the mirrors. A new teacher smiles at them and begins to mould and shape them through her voice and their sweat. The music begins and the pandemonium starts. Semi-clad bodies sweating in their half nakedness rise and fall in unison to the rhythm of the music. Despite the extreme physical toil the dancers hoot and clap, for themselves and for each other, and for dance. They like the teacher and what she's teaching them. So when they do do the choreography their love for her and for her art blasts the energy of the space and sends the temprature soaring even higher. 

" Come on everybody what cha here for, Move your body around like a nympho"

The dancers split into two halves and dance in groups. The ones standing on the sides look at the teacher, awe-struck, absorbing in every detail of her body movements.

"You either wana be with me, or be me!"

Everyone is back, back in the dance class, toiling and struggling, falling and rising, floundering and discovering, acheiving and improvising, moving and stagnating, hitting and being hit at, breaking their bodies. Back at being the slave their bodies want them to be. The better the slave the greater the mastery over the art. One kick, one jete, a head islotaion, a look, a turn, a jump, perfecting every nuance....

.... for just a place in the sun.