DENVER — Drawn to the lavish dance numbers in films from India, or just bored with their gym workouts, people are flocking to Bollywood-style dance classes that mix traditional Indian folk dances with hip-hop moves. And the U.S. exercise industry is taking notice.
Long enjoyed by young people of Indian descent, and common in big cities on the coasts, Bollywood-style classes are popping up in regions of the country where Indian cinema is new and there aren’t as many people of Indian descent.
Fans of Bollywood — an informal term for Hindi-language films, often romantic musicals — want formal instruction in the style marked by foot-stomping dance numbers that put folk moves and hip swings to pop beats.
“I was looking to try something different,” says Tina Striegel, a 45-year-old accountant who tried a Denver class after falling in love with Bollywood-style movies such as “Slumdog Millionaire,” the Oscar-nominated film inspired by Indian films that includes a large dance number at the end.
Denver’s Bollywood West school started in 2006 as the first in Colorado to focus on Bollywood-style dancing. It now packs in crowds four nights a week to two locations and will move to a bigger studio next month.
“I love the movies. I love the culture. I love all of it,” Striegel says before stretching for an hour-long session in which more than a dozen women practice a song-and-dance number.
Students swing their hips, raise one hand to their mouths as if calling out to a lover, and then lift one leg and hop forward in a line. After the number, instructor Renu Kansal reminds the dancers to wave their arms side to side smoothly, so they don’t look “too drill-team-ish.” As if they were in a Bollywood movie, the dancers are trying to tell a story of romance.
“I taught this in New York, and when we moved out here and I started Bollywood dancing classes, I was skeptical,” Kansal said. “I was like, oh gosh, I don’t know if this’ll work here. But I had to double my class offerings in under a month. It was a huge surprise to me.”
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