Last night, in honor of National Dance Week, Sam and I attended a free bhangra class at the Oberlin Dance Collective studios just down the street from our house.
Bhangra is an Indian-style of dancing traditionally done in the fields to celebrate the harvest season. Of course, on its way to the western world, it picked up various influences, most prominently pop and hip-hop. It now resembles something like a hybrid of old Bollywood movies and a Backstreet Boys video circa 1999.
(Two of my favorite things, of course.)
The room was packed when we arrived, and we managed to squeeze ourselves into a little space in the back corner. I wondered how I would be able to throw my arms around and twist and turn like the dancers I've seen on TV screens at my favorite Indian buffet in Fremont.
Luckily, I didn't have to worry about it, because the choreography was hard enough just standing still. When the class began, I realized that this was everything I wanted it to be and more: a lot of cupped hands, twisting wrists, and shoulder shrugs, all done to music that had a similar east-meets-west aesthetic. From the back, I could see the entire room moving in convincing unison. As expected, some moved with more of a fluid grace, but overall, we all shrugged when we should, threw our arms up together, and generally aped the lust for life the instructor tried to show us.
Toward the end, we were put in lines and led across the floor with repeated phrases of movement. During this exercise, I got to watch Sam, who found himself further back in line behind me. For the most part, he understood the moves; cerebrally, he knew to kick his left foot out after extending his right arm into the air, that he had to throw his shoulders back as his feet inched forward. I could tell. But something was just kind of off, kind of white, about it.
I found myself rushing to complete my movements so I could stand to the side and watch him. Not to criticize, not to laugh, not even to compare how we were doing relative to each other (as we can be competitive). Really, I just wanted a moment to take in the sight of him dancing, something I had seen him do countless times before at home (he can do a robot that I will never get tired of watching), but never to an organized set of choreography. He stumbled some, rushed to make up for missed moves, put his hands up when they should have gone down. But he never stopped trying.
Every so often, though, he'd get it, hit the beat at exactly the right time, throw his head up to the ceiling in just the way we were shown. If he knew I was watching, he'd look over at me with a smile, and I wished that I had more time to do just that--stand there and watch him dance and struggle and express--with a camera to immortalize what I saw when I stood in that corner and asked myself: could I possibly love this person any harder?
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