Dance Dance Dance...

...except this time - it's a little more Bollywood and a little less Steve Miller.

NOTE: This post is from when I was in Udaipur in April. It's late, but better than forgotten on the internet wasteland! :END NOTE

My life recently has been filled with dancetacular times. Last weekend I attended my first Indian Wedding (the next one is in two days but it's a Muslim wedding) with my friend Gabe from couchsurfing. The bride is the friend of my teacher's sons here, so I got the invite to go. To make a long story shorter (refer to Sara's earlier post on weddings because it was fairly similar) the family had set up a lighted dance floor that had a rhythm of its own. My friends here already knew I liked to dance, which was either a mistake to tell them that or a blessing - I'm still not so sure. So after eating dinner, which I should have waited to eat until after dancing, I was pulled (some might say dragged) onto the stage and started to boogie down to the most recent bollywood hits. Everyone else who was on the dance platform at that point exited, save one other guy who was labled as my "dance partner". A whole crowd of people formed around. When I say crowd, I mean like 300 people. There were over 1500 people in attendance at this wedding. I did a little breakdance and tried to leave the stage and was pulled back on for one more song. It was strange to have all these people watching - but no reaction. Usually people will clap but rather this was all stares (It's India, I've gotten used to the staring so it's only in retrospect I find it strange, or just different than back home). When I stopped grooving and told them I was too tired to go on (10 minutes of hippie dancing can make you exhausted) I walked through the crowd to get some water. Numerous times people stopped me to congratulate me on my dancing; "You've got some Bollywood moves" and "Your hair flows like a Bollywood star (one point hippie hair)". One guy even filmed three minutes of the dancing on his cell phone and showed me the part where I did a headstand and wangled my legs in the air... and in return gave me an approving head waggle. Score one for hippie dancing!!



And last night I threw a party with my friends here in celebration for a number of things. First off, Sara informed me that yesterday (Saturday the 27th) was World Dance Day. How could I miss an opportunity like this!! Secondly this week I found out that I got the Fulbright Grant for next year - so I'll be headed home in June and then I take of again in August for China to study painting. I cooked up a storm for tweleve people - spinach tomato subjee and of course...mashed potatoes and we rented a sound system to blast the tunes. The only trouble is that the Indian palate for food is quite different that the American one. This is the second time I've cooked for a group of Indians and received not the greatest of faces during the tastings. I know my cooking isn't terrible and I thought it was quite tasty (Ok it lacked some salt - but its better to undersalt than oversalt!!). So we ate and danced from 9-1am last night. At one point I put on Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" and two others danced and everyone liked the groove. But then I put on James Brown "Get on the Good Foot" and by gosh can Indian males hippie dance. Well, I'm not sure if my friend Dharmendra was mocking me by flailing his hands in the air and shaking his hips - but everyone was smiling and jumping around. And that's what counts.