NARPs: Next Bollywood Stars?

Before we jump into this week’s NARP activity, we just wanted to use this column as a platform to get a date. We still have not seen 50 Shades of Grey, and after the teen who buttered our popcorn for the Spongebob movie thought we were dating, we decided we should branch out and bring new people (boys). Plus, are we the only ones wondering how the burritos they serve compare to the almighty king, Chipotle?

Anyway, enough about our romantic life. This week, our NARP activity came to us by pure fate. We all know the feeling of entering the grand (ridiculously heavy?) doors of Proctor at peak dinner hours and having the slight smell of B.O., the aroma of pickled veggies, and the gazes of six people who you have been actively avoiding hitting you as soon as you walk in. Naturally, a panic attack ensues. Especially when your best friend (Maddie) is always late, even though she claimed to be “crossing College Street” 8 minutes ago. Proctor anxiety made Izzy run for the hills, aka our designated “safe room:” Proctor basement. On one fateful Monday evening, Izzy ran (speed walked) for cover and found that the dance room was in use by beautiful women dancing to exotic beats! With Maddie’s stalker skills, we soon discovered that it was the school’s South Asian dance troupe — Midd Masti!

We felt that Midd Masti might be easier to follow than the quickly-paced Riddim hip-hop class that we tried out earlier this year. Midd Masti’s slogan is “Bringing Bollywood to Middlebury,” so watching Slumdog Millionaire was obviously way more important than starting that 10-page research paper on our to-do lists. We thought attempting to master the final dance at the end of the movie would leave us well-prepared for the dance class, but then we got sidetracked by the Pussycat Dolls’ vocals and found ourselves singing karaoke to “Don’t Cha.” Then, we decided to watch the music video to Selena Gomez’s “Come and Get It” to stay away from culturally-insensitive music videos.

When Monday rolled around, Maddie and Izzy were both very excited to see what Bollywood had in store for them. At 5 p.m., we strolled in ready to shimmy and shake in Pussycat Doll-inspired outfits, and we discovered that we would be practicing the art of bharatnatyam, a classical South Asian dance taught by the College’s own Akhila Khanna ’17. According to Akhila, this style is significantly more nuanced and traditional than Bollywood dancing. For sixty minutes, we struggled to achieve each move with the same precision as our classmates. There were a lot of delicate finger and hand formations that left us feeling like we were coming down with carpal tunnel. Unable to obtain a close view of our instructor’s finger positioning, we decided to make that weird hand gesture everyone was obsessed with in 5th grade that spells out the word “blood” and hoped for the best. Nobody questioned us so we kept rollin’ with it.

By the end of the hour, we surprisingly kind of got the hang of our newly learned choreography. As a matter of fact, Akhila told us that she was “really impressed” withhow quickly we picked up the dance moves. Perhaps our Slumdog Millionaire binge-watching paid off after all! Now, if only Dev Patel and Freida Pinto were still dating…

Although our experience with bharatnatyam was slightly clumsy and graceless, we have to emphasize how beautiful and delicate the actual execution was by the women in the class. They hit their turns and completed their wrist flicks with such deliberation and finesse that, combined with the music, it was mesmerizing to watch. Fortunately for us (and the rest of campus), their Spring Showcase is coming up! On April 18, Midd Masti will perform more than ten different types of South Asian dance. We promise it will be the best two hours you ever spent. However, we cannot promise we won’t turn into Regina’s mom from Mean Girls and act out the choreography in the aisles. Tune in next week for when we learn to kick some serious a** at capoeira!