In case you missed cliche-ridden, inaccurate and hackneyed writing, my little sister hooks you up with some more– a LOT more (thanks, Veena).
Apparently, a goth belly dancing teacher who also loves participating in renn-faires has conceived, choreographed and executed a Bolly-flavored show in the state represented by the greatest Senator in the U.S. That’s cool– mad love to any gori who loves the brown enough to be down (shout out to our Andrea, who sings in Hindi so beautifully) but the…erm…journalist who wrote this article? I sentence him to a meeting between his ear and my super-vindictive fingers.
From the Phoenix New Times:
Once upon a time (okay, about a month ago), there was a woman named Samantha Riggs who so loved Hindi films (otherwise known as Bollywood, India’s global cinematic export) that she staged a tribute, Bollywood Love Rules…
The lead character of Riggs’ production, Varsha, floated across the stage cradling an oil lamp, which signified her love, and she and her chorus danced in complex formations to a deep, resonant beat, wiggling their hips and snapping their wrists with the attitude of the best Bollywood dancers in all the world.
Ready for the most egregious paragraph? I’m not. And I’ve already read it. Twice. Deep breath
Now, one might think Samantha Riggs and her ensemble cast must be of Indian heritage. But, in reality, their pale faces reveal they’re just a bunch of American girls, more like goth chicks than the daughters of goat herders from Delhi. Bollywood Love Rules would likely be a smash hit back in India. As it is, onstage at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts on a night in early January, the hundreds in the audience — some Indians, some not — don’t seem to care that they’re not in the land of the Punjabi.
Kindly excuse the vein popping out of my forehead and we may commence. FIRST of all, I’m an American girl too, asshole. I think what you meant was, “the performers are not desi”. SECOND, I know dozens of people from Delhi, some of whom I am closely related to– and none of them, family or not, herd goats. Finally (not really, but for the purposes of this paragraph, sure why not) those Arizonans don’t seem to care that they’re not in the land of the PunjabiS, BengaliS, KashmiriS, GujuratiS, MalayaleeS. Tell me, my trite friend, where is the Land of the Punjabi? Is it in the same nation as the Land of the Malayalam?Busta said, “Gimme some more”, so for him, I torture you further. Is Riggs an imminent threat to our cherished dancing queen, DD? Even more pressing– have any of you heard of or attended her classes? I know we have ONE reader in AZ (though sadly, I am not her sister).
The former computer programmer turned choreographer and belly-dance instructor currently makes a living reading tarot cards, eating fire, and teaching college students, earthy bohemians and hippies — women, mostly — how to dance Bollywood-style at Tempe’s Domba Studio. (She’s also taught workshops out of town, from Indianapolis to San Francisco.)
She so could’ve gone to Davis. Well, the Whole Earth Festival at least.
And in the bringing coals to Newcastle category:
Bollywood Love Rules, which featured a cast of almost two dozen, including several performers from Riggs’ Boom Boom Bollywood dance troupe, premièred January 7 in Scottsdale, for a one-night gig. And now, with the help of a couple of Indian doctors who’ve put their reputations — and a sizable bankroll — on the line for Riggs’ production, she and Boom Boom are thinking globally, planning a trip across the pond to Britain later this year.
There’s more, though sadly for all of us, there are no photographs accompanying the article. I’d continue to snark it to shreds, but I need both my migraine meds and to get to work. Read the rest here. Keep your painkiller of choice nearby, I wish I did.
Seriously though, I’d like to know: what did all of you who grew up in the States learn about South Asia in school?
hhm…..actually, i don’t remember much more than studying friggin’ mesepotamia and south america in school. i learned more from desi friends, family, and indian food festivals. at least i hope i did.
also, gotta make note that no mater how od some people may look in eastern wear, it’s still better than lokking like on has been digging about in the dust bin for their fashion – jeans with hols in unmentioanle spots, or dresses that are not much much more than a stratgically placed ribbon or strip of cloth across the body to be an excuse for having fabric on one’s self, etc.
what i really am dying to know is where the heck daler mehndi gets those snazzy jackets of his!
I was offline for a day and missed all this, so if anyone is still reading this thread, these are my thoughts. (disclaimer: I used to take tribal bellydancing lessons in SF and even did a documentary on it — that’s the background of these Boom Boom women — dreads and tats and piercings are almost a prerequisite for that scene) For the couple of you who worry about whether goris will turn it into a western cliche, what IS Bollywood dancing? Define it. Because I just spent a whole day filming the woman who has gotten Bollywood dancing offically onto a syllabus for all UK dance students (this is a big deal, apparently), and I swear, with all her descriptions of how Bollywood takes influences from Indian, Arabic, Modern and Hip-hop dance (among a million others) and is constantly evolving, I was left wondering how one could possibly write a syllabus for it. To me it sounds like a great FUSION dance form, which is fine, but does that mean Indians have some kind of cultural ownership of it to the exclusion of others? If someone trained in Kathak added a few hip-hop moves to her routine, she would be Bolly. If a jazz dancer added a few bhangra moves to hers, she would be suddenly viewed as appropriating someone else’s culture, no? It just seems to me that Bollywood, of all things, absolutely represents global culture and evolution of dance, so no one should hate on the poor goris. That’s all I’m sayin’. 😉 As for whether whiteys look good in Indian clothes, puh-LEEZE. So brown women magically have curves that all white women somehow lack? Just admit you’re USED to seeing one thing over another and it’s hard to adjust. That’s like some rural auntie declaring that brown women couldn’t possibly look good in jeans because they’re Western and weren’t “meant” for y’all. I ain’t saying I’d ever wear a sari or a salwar kameez (although I have a few plain white Indian shirts bought in London markets), but I hate when people get all bent out of shape about who’s “allowed” to wear certain kinds of clothes, using some lame excuse like “it doesn’t look right on you guys.” But I’m glad most people on this thread feel the love with the dancing goris. 🙂
What I also just e-mailed to Anna is that this is all the zeitgeist, and perhaps tribal bellydancing is a gateway drug for Bollywood. I actually saw the Boom Boom girls linked from my old teacher’s website earlier this week and was thinking about how they had gotten to be where they are. And look at me, I happened to like Asian Underground music and now somehow I’ve ended up halfway across the world editing videos with loads of bhangra and Bolly influences. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PUT IN YOUR CD PLAYER, innit?!? 😉
What did I learn about India/South Asia in school?
Here’s my answer: nothing. I took two “world history” classes; one in sixth grade and one in ninth grade. Our sixth-grade teacher spent a lot of time on the Middle East (the Israel/Palestine thing kind of seemed her issue), and then we studied Europe for pretty much the rest of the year. I know where every country in Europe is (if you count the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia… it was 1990), but I remember nothing about studying anything west of what was at that time the USSR, if it was covered at all.
Ninth grade world history, I remember clearly. We didn’t touch ANYTHING non-Western. We studied European history, the plagues, up through world wars I and II. We spent a lot of time on the wars. I remember thinking indignantly, “How can this be called WORLD history if we don’t learn anything about Africa or Asia?”
I didn’t really know anything about South Asia at all, except what I knew from my Indian and Pakistani friends, which wasn’t very much, until about 1998. Nothing I learned came from a book, except some oversimplified stuff about Hinduism in a required religion class at university.
So my experience, in a nutshell, is: I learned nothing at all in public school about South Asia. “World” history means “History of Europe.” But then again, our American history books (circa 1994) only went as far as WWII and a tiny bit into the Civil Rights era for political correctness. No Nixon, no Reagan, and no Vietnam or Korean wars. High school history is a joke; real history is fascinating. I’ll definitely be “supplementing” my kids’ education with alternative histories and primary sources, and maybe they won’t hate it like I did for so long.
Chai, Anna – haha, I think that I can make a pretty good guess!