She prefers to be known as just Belly Dance Diva. This belly dancer from Canada is trying to make the dance form popular in India, and says that Bollywood choreography makes her laughBelly Dance Diva, as she’d like to be called, says that it’s not uncommon for belly dancers to have a professional name and keep their real name private. “Most belly dancers in the world are not known by their real names. They all have a professional name. I’m known as the Belly Dance Diva and I like it. I want to keep my private and personal lives separate,” she says.
She was in Delhi recently, and was pretty gung-ho about being in India. Originally from Canada, she came to India about 10 months ago to learn yoga, and dreams of settling down here with her yoga instructor boyfriend, whom she met in Pune. How did she start dancing? “I’ve been dancing since the age of five. I tried all sorts of dances – hip-hop, salsa, jazz, even break dance – but I wanted to do more than just dance. I wanted to teach dancing to others. I actually started my career as a teacher and taught French for five years in a school in Canada. I find teaching a rewarding career. So when I started learning belly dance, I knew that it was the one kind of dance that I wanted people to learn,” she says.
She adds that in India, belly dance is seen more as a form of exercise rather than as a dance form. “Belly dance is new to India. People here see it as an exercise rather than a dance. But I think India is ready to learn it as a dance form as well,” she says. “I also feel that there are many misconceptions about belly dance, and maybe that’s why it hasn’t become that popular in India yet. It’s not a seductive dance form designed to catch a man’s eye. It is supposed to be an expression of your soul because it is a solo dance, not a group dance,” she says.
On the subject of belly dance in Bollywood, she says that it is often confused with cabaret. “I have shot for some Bollywood films and a few south Indian movies. In my next film, Cricket, I’ll be performing with Jackie Shroff. I got the offer because the movie needed a belly dancer. I would love to teach actresses and choreographers how to properly perform belly dance in their song sequences,” she says. She also says that she finds mainstream Bollywood dance sequences very “funny”. “I haven’t met too many Bollywood choreographers, but I think there’s a lot of freestyle dancing used in Bollywood song sequences. There’s so much time crunch that there is no time for rehearsals. I find Bollywood dance sequences very funny. I just find the movies very funny. The first time I watched a Bollywood dance sequence, it looked like a bunch of college kids who’d decided to make a joke of the movements!” she laughs.
