Perfect Poise: A ballet class in session. Picture by Srinivas

If tucked away in one corner of Ranchi, students are learning how to gracefully sway to the gentle movements ballet demands, elsewhere young girls and boys are shaking a leg to the latest in Bollywood beats. Classes for traditional forms like Kathak and Bharatnatyam are no less packed.

Proving that when it comes to learning dance, one doesn’t have to look far. Modern or classical, they are all popular. Though purists may snigger, at the moment what’s really in is modern dance, or one should say, Bollywood dance. What’s given it an impetus in recent times is the success achieved by youngsters, some not even in their teens, by their performances on shows like Boogie Woogie. Shut your eyes to the Woogie kind of gyrations, or hang on to their every move, fact is youngsters are ready to groove to them, and ready to welcome them are dance schools like Pazeb.

Rs 200 and six months is what they claim is needed to learn it, which purists dismiss as hardly dance. “It helps the young to develop their personalities by making them fit, while killing their stage-fright,” said Raj Sinha, who teaches dance at Pazeb. And director Deepak Sinha pointed out, nearly 400 students are learning it. “I have enrolled my child for it, though I don’t like it myself,” admitted a guardian, who didn’t want to be identified.

This, point out sceptics, is because guardians want short-cuts to fame. To which the justification given is it also involves a lot of exercise for children, making them fit. Teenagers are clear why they like it. If it can lead to fame, they are all for it, they say. This may be the new craze, but classical forms are not dying out either. Young girls are very much lining up to learn them. Ranchi had some renowned dance teachers such as T. Krishnadas, Bipul Das, and at a later stage Manju Malkani. They are no more, but their schools, now run by members of their families or former students, are still running.

Dance schools apart, there’s also a tradition of training students privately at homes, and arranging for them to give exams through recognised centres. Most of these schools are affiliated to one of the institutions, among them being Bangiya Sangeet Parishad, Calcutta, Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad and Pracheen Kala Kendra, Chandigarh.

If one thinks parents are looking for short cuts to success, it is not always so. “I put my daughter to learn in one such school as the teacher asked me at the beginning if I had any ambition of seeing my daughter perform within a short period,” said a guardian, B. N. Majumdar. “When I said no, she accepted my daughter,” he said. Even ballet, which requires a lot of dedication before one achieves the grace of a ballerina, has many takers in Ranchi. Helps, of course, that its teacher is an interesting Dutch lady, Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, who has been living here for nearly 13 years. For those interested, it’s a form that requires devotion to fitness, for one needs flexibility. And unless one becomes an Anna Pavlova, one’s not going to make a fortune of it, she warns.

Her warnings have certainly not discouraged young girls, between 6 years and 14 years, whom she has been teaching for last 6 years, from lining up. All set to master the graceful steps.