Bollywood Dance Classes – Guest Artist Simmy!!!
Simmy will do a two week Guest Artist spot on Sunday nights during the Tribal Belly Dance classes while Laylia is on vacation! Don’t miss the chance to study with Simmy to increase your knowledge about the dances from India and incorporate/fuse in some of these beautiful movements into your dance style!!
You will need to fill out the Oasis Membership form 
if you are NEW to the studio.
Simmy’s Dance Art Form makes for nice fusion movement into Belly Dance and Tribal Belly Dance!!
What is Classical Indian & Bollywood Dancing?
Bollywood dancing is a commercial name for modern Indian dancing. It’s a combination of classical Indian dance—like Kathak and Bharatanatyam,(which is the base), folk dancing from all over India (well known “Bhangra”), Jazz, Hip-hop and sometimes has a Latino and Arabic sway. It’s fun and there’s a lot of deep meaning behind music in the films. You can actually express what the music means, through the graceful movements of the body.
Bollywood dance consists of various Indian dance forms; a fusion of Classical Indian, Folk, Arabic, Expressionist, Latino, and Street styles.
Bollywood dance is a fantastic fusion of Indian folk and classical styles with hop-hop and Latin moves. As anyone
who is a fan of Bollywood films will know, it’s colorful, animated and exciting.
Bollywood dancing is the foundation of every great Indian film. Songs typically comment on the action
taking place in the movie in several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot so that a character
has a reason to sing. Other times, a song is an externalization of a character’s thoughts or presages
an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie.
Recently, Bollywood influence has seeped into the mainstream American culture, especially in movies (Moulin Rouge, Ghost
World, The Inside Man, The Guru, Monsoon Wedding) and music (Black Eyed Peas, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Daddy Yankee, Truth Hurts,
Missy Elliot).
Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning “of films”). Songs from Bollywood movies are generally
pre-recorded by professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the words to the song on-screen,
often while dancing Bollywood. The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modelled on Indian dance:
classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance
elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual to see
Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a
troupe of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian films feature unrealistically instantaneous shifts of
location and/or changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a pas de deux, it is
often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is referred to as a
“picturisation”. Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is
worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an externalisation of a character’s
thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event is almost always
two characters falling in love. Bollywood films have always used what are now called “item numbers”. A physically
attractive female character (the “item girl”), often completely unrelated to the main cast and plot of the film,
performs a catchy song and dance number in the film. In older films, the “item number” may be performed by a courtesan
(tawaif) dancing for a rich client or as part of a cabaret show. In modern films, item numbers may be inserted as discotheque
sequences, dancing at celebrations, or as stage shows.
