The energy of dance
Tanushree Gupta is passionate about dance and fits it around being a microbiologist. Carly Thomas went and watched her dance troupe rehearse.
It is blowing a gale outside. Trees are contorting, umbrellas turn inside out and a paddock of cows in the distance huddle. And inside, the same furious energy spins and whirls.
It’s a female energy, full of laughter, wide smiles, colour and encouragement.
Tanushree Gupta is at the centre, caught up in the beat of a storm of music, and she is also at the core of Indian dance in Palmerston North.
The music drops and the dancers do too, into a colourful pile of skirts, peacock-coloured scarfs and glinting gold jewellery.
The wind outside doesn’t drop, but Gupta’s smile is wide. She is known for this smile and for the magnetism of her energy.
And the women she is drawing in are from many different places – Nepal, Fiji, India – a filled cup of nationalities and ethnicities. Her Bollywood class at the Rangiora Hall on Monday nights is jampacked, having grown from tiny beginnings.
Gupta is trained in the traditional Indian style of Kathak, a storytelling dance form that finds its origins in travelling bards who communicated ancient mythology through movement, song and music.
Gupta too has a story to tell and it is one that saw her class of one transform into a class of many.
Gupta is from Kanpur, near Delhi, and it is where she trained in Kathuk. It was something she did as a child because her parents wanted her to and as she worked over the years towards her diploma, it became a form of expression that she loved.
‘‘It is a way of portraying what is inside, your emotions, your stories, whatever is in your mind. It has to have a facial expression and gesture and it is quite disciplined.’’
Gupta says once she understood the rhythms and the beats she could take her own personal style further.
She worked with Shiamak Davar, the choreographer who became famous for his modern take on the Indian dance scene in cinema, and this further installed in her a desire to teach and create.
And during all of this, Gupta also became a microbiologist. She says in India it is hard to balance a working life with a creative one, but when she moved to New Zealand in 2009 she saw her chance.
‘‘I thought this is the right time and the right place. Palmerston North seemed to know a bit about Bollywood, but not much about the classical dance forms we have and actually what Bollywood really is. There was a gap here and I thought ‘why not’, and I started up.’’
The Shree Dance Academy started with just one student, ‘‘and sometimes she didn’t even come’’. For about eight months, Gupta would turn up for her lone student.
‘‘I then got a few more and they really liked it. Some more came to give it a try and they are still doing that and then I think just word of mouth.’’
Between 30 and 40 people now come to her Monday class and it is the pure joy of it that is the pull, says long-time student Shareena Sandbrook.
‘‘It is just so much fun. She has a beautiful energy. In New Zealand, dancing is something that you don’t feel free enough to express yourself and it’s not associated with being happy. But with this type of dance everyone is happy. We laugh and we smile as we dance and it is just amazing.’’
Gupta says when she started out she wanted her classes to be open to everyone. She says she continues to be amazed at how ‘‘I’m not looking for people who are dancers. I am looking for people that want to fulfil their dreams in dance. I just want people who really want to.’’
Her class is based on her own choreography in a way that reflects her classical training, but also has her own style, and fun and high energy, with music that wants you to move. There’s also laughter, ‘‘always laughter’’. Those who want to perform do. She has a close circle of women who she trusts to put on a dazzling display.
Like the forever-smiling Namita Pradhan, who now helps Gupta teach, her first performance was at Diwali in Wellington a few years ago. The group’s performance had been pushed back in the programme and her fellow dancer and good friend Shareena Sandbrook says they were all so nervous.
‘‘But we just kept dancing around, hugging each other, telling each other ‘I love you’. We are like a family and we just supported each other, which made it all really cool and fun. We danced off our nerves.’’
Gupta’s troupe perform often at community events and they help her teach traditional Kathak and a kid’s Bollywood class as well. And she does all of this while juggling her fulltime job in ag-research, something she says is possible because she is a positive person.
‘‘You have one life and you need to do something about that and just have fun. The bad and good parts will always be there and you have to balance it out. You have to find the good in bad as well. We all have that opportunity.’’