Art of dancing ?

The garba-dandia event this year wasn't as enjoyable as last year. We were a group of around 10 ppl who had gone for the event last year and who shared a common bond of not knowing the dance at all. Thankfully, there were a lot of uncles, aunties, grandmas and grandpas who were playing basic dandia and were happy to give us some beginner lessons. We had played dandia in just 2-3 styles, all 5-step dandia (as I learnt yesterday). But the fun part of it was learning the dance and enjoying ourselves learning dandia by making complete fool out of ourselves.

But the situation yesterday was pretty different. We had gone to a place where 80% of the ppl were teens and almost all of them were expert in dandia. And our group too was variegated. 2-3 of us were experts (they had either lived here for long to know dandia pretty good or were gujjus), and the other 3 were totally dhakkans in the dance. Though there was a friend who taught us the advanced 12 step dandia, it was pretty tough to actually go and dance it out. We learnt the steps pretty well, eventually. So we thought until we realised that all the groups that we were joining were dissipating within 5 mins. It was pretty embarrassing. All my friends lost enthu because of the embarrassment. I had a lot of enthu, but no style. I finally joined a group of kids who were playing the 5-step dandia. It was embarrassing too, but was at least better than playing worse dandia!

But there were fun parts of the night too. We went out for a coffee (at a gas station, which I thought was a really bad idea), and the conversation went on pretty well. Got to know the unknowns pretty well.

Overall, it was an okie-dokie night that didn't meet my expectations.