GROOMING WITH DANCE

GROOMING WITH DANCE

It’s very logical that pageants like the Femina Miss India and Grasim Mr. India have chosen to include ball room dance training as part of the grooming package. The Waltz, the Samba, the Fox Trot, the Cha Cha Cha, the live… they all add a lot of grace and elegance to the posture and the personality. Ballroom dancing also makes you very comfortable with the way you move your hands. Most of us are naturally diffident about what we do with our arms, and the hand movements in dance add a lot of confidence and poise. Such elements of grace and style come into the overall body language of someone who has been dancing for a while. Then there’s the knowledge that these dances impart to you. Like Indian classical dances, these too have a lot of history and culture attached to them. Learning the background of the dance helps you learn about global countries and cultures. There’s nothing like the traditional dance that tells us as much about the country. Today, we’re traveling so much and interacting with, so many people from across the world, that such knowledge is very helpful. It also helps you break the ice when you encounter new people. For example, if you meet someone from Argentina, you could use the Tango and its rich lore as a talking point and land up becoming better friends than you’d otherwise have been.
Another aspect of dancing is that it’s simply so much fun. It relaxes you, takes you away from the stress of daily life. So many corporate are now waking up to this reality. Whether it’s highflying executives from Lintas HLL or Hinduja Hospital’s doctors, they’re all looking to ballroom dancing as a great way to de-stress. After working 14-hour days, you need a kind of relaxation that takes you out of your chair and gets you moving. And the good music playing automatically diverts your mind. In fact, when people who are highly disturbed and distracted by problems go, for quiet forms of wellness like yoga and meditation, the concentration doesn’t come too easily for them. With dance the loud and lively music gets you going in its own way.
And then there’s the all-important fitness aspect. Although ballroom dance does not appear as frenetic as an aerobic class, it’s as much of a cardiovascular workout. Forty-five minutes of ballroom dance is as good as half-an-hour on the treadmill or an hour of aerobics.
Just like you feel good when you dress up well, and have your hair and face looking great, a good dance session makes you feel very special, it gives you a high. It gives you an inner feeling that makes you feel joyous and happy. And this is reflected in the way you look at other people and interact with them.
The more experienced you get into dancing, the more you start being disciplined about posture, and also the way you show respect towards other men and women. It gives you a formal outlook, as you are conscious about how you hold out your hand to someone when asking them to dance, how and where to hold a lady while dancing… These matters of etiquette, which soon reflect on how you walk and how you talk, make you a more evolved individual.