Bollywood Grooves at Canary Wharf

This evening Bollywood Grooves, a London dance company, put on a free event in Canary Wharf as part of the district's Indian Summer season of events.

The main show consisted of the main troupe dancing to a medley of recent Bollywood hits; Dus, Dhoom, Bunty Aur Babli and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom being amongst the few I can remember. And they were pretty good too: the Company's main instructor Vandana Alimchandani proved that she was well qualified to run a company such as this, while the rest of the gang managed to put on a good show (although I did think that some dancers were really good students rather than not so good professionals).

They had also promised to hold some workshops for those of us wanting to learn a few moves too, and it didn't take me much convincing by a friend to step up and take part with them.

Now, like most people, I reckon I can dance relatively well. Well, I can in my head at least. Still, whether I can or not in reality is largely irrelevant; ever since Bollywood Star I've lost any inhibition I may have stopping me from joining in a bit of a public group boogie, even if it's only on special occasions (like weddings, classes or, yes, reality-show-film-auditions).

The tune we danced to was the title track from Salaam-e-Ishq, which was fortunate for me since I knew the song relatively well. The routine itself wasn't trivial and I messed up on more than one part of it, but on the whole I think I did okay. I do think that I should have stretched a bit beforehand though. Like a friend (whose opinion didn't count for poo since he chose to stick to the sidelines) commented, my back was all I was going to manage to pull this evening with those particular dance moves.

But it was all fun anyway and I had a good time both watching and taking part and watching some more. It probably goes without saying that there was more than one attractive dancer on show, and I can count two distinct occasions when I happened to fall in love with a couple of them. I even got to catch a dance with one of my infatuations during the freestyle Bhangra session at the end; she even treated me further by agreeing to pose for a piccie with me (which you won't find on my Picasa along with the rest of the piccies from the event, here).

Oh man. I've just realised that I've become one of those guys. You know, the ones who get their picture taken with a hot girl at a show whom they're probably never going to see ever again and was probably humouring them anyway.

Sad, I know. But she was hot, so it's all good.