Reeling the Views In
USHA JEY, 25, HAS FUSED BHARATANATYAM AND HIP-HOP TO BECOME A VIRAL SENSATION
In May, a dance reel that 25-year-old Usha Jey uploaded on Instagram went viral. She woke up to a million notifications—artists from India, France and the US were sharing her reel; it found a mention even on American rapper and producer Swiss Beatz’ feed. Set to American rapper Lil Wayne’s ‘Uproar’, the video in question sees Jey and two other dancers attempt a routine that blends Bharatanatyam with hip-hop. Dressed in green check Kalakshetra sarees with jasmine flowers tucked in their hair, the trio effortlessly switch between Bharatanatyam steps while popping, locking and breaking.
Jey’s short dance routine captured exactly what makes dance videos so viral in the age of TikTok trends—an element of both surprise and relatability (Remember that Norwegian dance crew grooving to ‘Kaala Chashma’?). As the four million views on Jey’s video prove, the art of dancing, capable of cutting across borders, is now more universal than it has ever been.
The social media fame also resulted in Jey getting a global spotlight: Recently, she performed Kuthu, a popular folk dance from Tamil Nadu, along with her signature fusion choreography at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games. This isn’t the first time that Jey, a choreographer and dancer based in Paris, captured the public consciousness. Three years ago, Jey decided to close out the distance between Bharatanatyam and hip-hop by envisioning them as a combined dance form. A Sri Lankan Tamil, Jey was born and raised in Paris and, to her, this kind of a fusion dance felt like an apt celebration of the two cultures that shaped her life. So, she gave it a name— #HybridBharatham —and started uploading these fusion routines on her Instagram. “It was my way of connecting to my culture,” she admits. The virality came almost overnight and it’s not difficult to see why. Jey’s dance videos are bite-sized and entirely difficult to look away from: there’s one where Jey and her friend—dressed in tank tops and bright yellow sarees—energetically dance to Jack Harlow’s ‘What’s Popping’; another irresistible video sees them groove to a Joyner Lucas track.
Even though Jey’s dance reels— there are five instalments in these particular series—have brought her fame almost overnight, making her gain over 50k followers, she still looks at dance as a way of expressing herself and staking her place in the world. In the third video of the #HybridBharatham series that was uploaded in 2020, Jey danced to Canadian-Sri Lankan rapper Shan Vincent de Paul’s ‘One Hundred Thousand Flowers’. The song, essentially a protest song, underlines the discrimination against and massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka. In the video, Jey’s trademark playful body language is replaced by a quiet anger, her way of articulating the injustices that sullied her heritage.
Even more remarkable is the fact that Jey wasn’t always well-versed with Bharatanatyam. In fact, she started learning the dance form only five years ago. “I have always found it graceful and wanted to be able to do it myself someday,” she says. By her own admission, she is the kind of person who would rather do something late than never do it at all. If she had not, perhaps the world would have never realised that Bharatanatyam could also be made this modern and so impossibly cool. ■
Usha Jey looks at dance as a way of expressing herself and staking her place in the world