WHERE TO GO
, Photo by archives Oaza
DANCE WORKSHOP
Bollywood dance in Zagreb
The newest world's trend is coming to Croatia - ladies dressed in sari dance like in Bollywood musicals. Ever since I saw the musical Bollywood on Broadway, New York, several years ago, I was impressed with the Boollywood style dance, beautiful and colorful costumes, energy that was on the stage, and gorgeous male and female dancers.
And their quantity! It was a long musical, but it was so impressive that I didn't realize that it lasted for hours. The story was quite naïve and innocent.
The next day I signed up for my first bollydance class. It wasn't easy to find one, not even in New York, since Bollywood dancing just started to be presented in workshops, out of Indian communities.
Hindi-language film industry
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India. Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the largest centers of film production in the world. The name is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. Bollywood films are multi-million dollar productions, with the most expensive productions costing up to USD 20 million. It employs people from all parts of India and attracts thousands of aspiring actors and actresses, all hoping for a break in the industry. Most Bollywood movies are three hours long and Indian public expects to hear some songs in them. Almost all musicals feature long song and dance numbers, and hidden playback singers become famous as well as actors. They also have quite a bit of English dialogue, because India is a former colony of England. Another intriguing aspect of Bollywood films and musicals is that they are very innocent. The hero and the heroine rarely kiss on the mouth, because it is a taboo in India to do that in public.
Now it is possible to learn some Bollywood dance moves and choreography in Croatia as well, through Oaza organization, www.oaza-zg.org, established by my former teacher of Oriental dance, Ivana Medvedec (left on the picture). Ivana organizes and promotes different forms of Oriental and Folkloric dance. 
Philosophy behind dances
- Traditional dances give us great inspiration and it's a challenge to teach them in a way that appeals to modern women. There is a lot of history, art and philosophy behind them. Bollywood dance is fun to learn and visually effective due to colorful costumes, jewelry and choreography. What women wouldn't like to dress up in that beautiful sari? - says Ivana Medvedec.
- Music is a combination of Indian traditional music and modern influences that attracts large audience and it is easy to remember. Bollydance is less demanding then oriental dance or classical Indian dance. In Croatia women just started to show interest for Bollywod dance, while it is very popular, for example, in Germany and Great Britain, due to large Indian communities. At this moment there are no regular classes in Croatia, just occasional workshops with guests from abroad.
This weekend Ivana Medvedec organized one-day workshop with Nataša Kočar, Bollydance teacher from Slovenia (right on the picture).
Indian courtesans - tawaif
- Dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modeled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian films feature unrealistic and instantaneous shifts of location and/or changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and the heroine dance and sing a pas de deux, it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is referred to as a "picturisation". Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is a part of the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an externalization of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that has not yet occurred in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event almost always concerns two characters falling in love - explains Nataša Kočar.
Date of publishing: October 25, 2009