{"id":1404,"date":"2005-04-22T20:08:04","date_gmt":"2005-04-23T01:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=1404"},"modified":"2005-04-22T18:56:10","modified_gmt":"2005-04-22T23:56:10","slug":"gypsy_rajas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/22\/gypsy_rajas\/","title":{"rendered":"Gypsy Rajas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beginning today, Delhi will play host to its first ever Salsa festival. Hips will be swaying and spins will be attempted. The BBC reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n

Kaytee Namgyal, the president of the Salsa India Dance Company and festival organiser, says he opened his first salsa studio in Delhi four years ago. \n
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\nWith the growing demand for salsa lessons, he now runs nine centres in the city. He is hoping to open a school in Mumbai (Bombay) soon. \n
\n
\nKaytee says he’s taught close to 1,500 students in the past four years and the number of those wanting to join his studios is ever growing. \n
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\nSo what makes salsa so appealing? \n
\n
\n“Salsa is funky and fancy,” Kaytee says.<\/blockquote>\n\n

I think this introduction of Salsa into the motherland is just plain wrong. Hear me out. Picture if you will a guy and a girl. They are in love but the girl is being coy and evasive. Suddenly, they start singing, and dance…the Salsa. Now I ask you quite simply, what would their friends in the background do? Hindi-film dancing provides opportunity for these background hang-arounders to just do their thing. It’s very individualistic. I can’t imagine all those extras hip grinding as well. That would be scandalous!<\/p>\n\n

And now for the zinger:<\/p>\n\n

“Indian people are not great at salsa. That’s because they are so attuned to dancing to Bollywood lyrics<\/strong>. They can’t dance to beats. And salsa is totally based on beats.” \n
\n
\nAnd that’s not the only problem Indian dancers have. \n
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\n“Indian men don’t lead well<\/strong>,” says Jaquelin, who learnt salsa in Geneva.\n
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\n“And it’s not really the music they listen to all the time. Also, there’s a cultural problem here. In salsa, you have to touch the woman. And it’s not always easy for the men here to do so. They have to learn to do that<\/strong>.”<\/blockquote>\n\n

Ouch. Luckily there are boot camps<\/a> for this sort of thing.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beginning today, Delhi will play host to its first ever Salsa festival. Hips will be swaying and spins will be attempted. The BBC reports: Kaytee Namgyal, the president of the Salsa India Dance Company and festival organiser, says he opened … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}