Music at MICA (and Dance) : Part – 2
Read last part of this series here – Music at MICA : Part -1
Every year, our Culcomm (short for Cultural Committee) organizes a talent hunt during the Dandiya nights in the month of October. The festival is called ‘Oorja’ which means energy and the competition is called ‘MICA has Got Talent’. It’s an open platform to perform for everyone and is not limited by categories. A lot of people showcase their talent in various genres. There are some cash prizes as well. Even though, I perform regularly on stage but not so much for dance-competitions. I wasn’t ready for this competition. I was upset over something and also quite busy and so wasn’t feeling up to take part in it though a lot of my friends suggested that I should go for it. But I decided against it. Yet I didn’t like not being a part of it and had to try to distract myself away from it. That’s when I realized something; NOTHING can keep me away from dancing. I just can’t sit in audience and not feel like dancing. It’s like a drug for me. It’s my biggest high.
1 hour for the competition to start and I was asking my senior if there was a spot for me, just in case. She answered positively. But I had nothing ready to go on stage and that too for a competition. 10 minutes before the competition started, I finally decided to dance on Mallika Sherawat’s graceful dance number Maiya Maiya from the movie Guru. I had always wanted to dance on this one. I had no time left for editing and rehearsals. Just downloaded the song, copied it to my pen drive, dressed in a simple t-shirt, my new and bright harem pants and a metallic belt apt for dancing purposes (gifted by my best friend Jaya Gupta as I always kept dancing). I was ready to go albeit with absolutely no rehearsals. My roommate probably thought I was crazy and asked me to think about it again. She was concerned and wasn’t so sure that I should perform with no preparation at all. But I knew I just had to do it.
I rushed to the audi, handed over the song to the person handling music, asked her to stop the song at a particular point (no time for editing!). I went on the stage and just surrendered myself to the beats of music. I had no idea, what the hell I was doing. Whatever it was, the audience was applauding constantly and so I went on. At the end of it, both Saumya ma’am and Anita ma’am (they were judging the competition) seemed awestruck. They hugged me and gave many compliments. I still remember that look of awe on their faces, which was my biggest prize that night. Everyone congratulated on the performance. Saumya ma’am asked where I was learning from and refused to believe that it was impromptu and that I’m an absolutely self-trained dancer. I went on to tie with my senior (an amazing dancer herself) for the second prize. This was one hell of a rush. I so wish, I had a video to see what I did that night, in my first ever attempt at Arabic dancing (I’ve no idea where it came from but has stayed with me since).
