Masala Bhangra and Other Reasons My Shoulders Hurt

This weekend brought "The Study of Dance as an Expression of Joy", or, a Masala Bhangra class on Saturday. Masala Bhangra is a modified version of northern Indian dancing style involving a lot of shoulder shrugging, bouncing, and brightly-colored-handkerchief waving. It was awesome.

I think, being that we're a collection of many cultures and originally founded by Puritans, dance is not really a universal cultural expression in America. To me, dance has always been about expressing sexuality - I have been known to describe that amazing connection between two people on the dancefloor as "sex with all your clothes on" - and culturally that always seems to have been the dominant mindset. I believe our society has trouble with almost every form of self-expression. We try not to be too happy, too loud, too sad. And that repression leads to these formless outbursts of sexuality, bumping&grinding in clubs, but it feels good and it's dark and I can't say I have a problem with it, even if I sometimes wish someone would bust out a choreographed dance with me possibly involving the tango or the last scene from Dirty Dancing.

But Bhangra is completely different. It is meant to be a loud, choreographed, spontaneous expression of joy (yes, it can be both spontaneous and choreographed). We spent 20 minutes learning a basic 4 minute combination of steps and then the next 40 minutes doing them over and over to everything from traditional Indian music to Lil' Wayne remixes. It was awesome. I kept having too much fun to remember that I was supposed to be dancing and would suddenly accidentally stop in the middle and just start laughing.

Also my shoulders and knees are KILLING me now but that is beside the point.

So in addition to wanting to find out all about spiritual traditions in Rwanda, I now want to seek out dance to see what it tells me about the culture. I need to do a little background on the history of dance and spirituality so I can keep a watchful eye towards the impact of colonialism on those traditions.