#188: Dancing With Members of the Same Sex

It's no surprise that Indians enjoy dancing. On wedding occasions, birthday occasions, pooja occasions, after party occasions, bhangra occasions, and garba occasions, Indians love to crank dat curry sauce and cut a Persian rug.

What is somewhat eye-opening, however, is the Indian penchant for dancing with members of the same sex. In metropoles around the world Indian men and Indian women congregate in groups of their own gender and make their shoulders lean. Maybe it's a sociological result of a conservative culture inhibiting casual and free interaction between the sexes beginning at a very young age. Or maybe it's more simple than that; maybe Indians just like getting down with people that share their genitalia.

You've seen this phenomenon manifest itself at every SASA show, Diwali Function, Holi Fest, India Night, Fusion Concert, and Diversity in Dance Celebration you've ever been to. In nearly each Hindi Flim Remix Dance there is an even number of boys and girls. One would assume this ratio would facilitate quick and easy partner pairing.

Wrong. Instead, Indians prefer to break fusion dances into gender specific portions during which all the girls dance together and subsequently all the boys dance together. Girls will usually do something vaguely inspired by Indian classical forms while the boys will break out their classic Blackstreet-meets-112-meets-'Nysnc-meets-DDLJ hip-hop bhangra routine to the ritual cheers of "Oh my Gawwwwwwds, so sexy Pratul!" from the crowd.

One also sees the Indian proclivity for same sex brown downs in numerous national dance competitions that encourage dude-on-dude dancing and girl-on-girl garbas. Bhangra Blowouts, Dandia Dhamakas, and Raas Riots from Berkeley to GW feature large groups of Indians breaking it down on stage with finger flags and wooden dowels while the opposite sex watches from the seats of the amphitheater, left only to "ooh" and "aah" at hammer downs, poorly executed worms and gratuitous shoulder mounting. Clearly, as evinced by by these demonstrations of dancing in practice, in India girls garba with girls, boys bhangra with boys and only girls named Lakshmi do Kathak.



Perhaps nowhere else is the practice of same sex dancing between Indians more prevalent in the community than at the club or after party. Normally, social interaction tends to escalate during the course of the night from immature tom-foolery to more intimate exchanges on the dance-floor. One need not look further than their high school Homecoming dance to see this. At the end of Homecoming, who were you slow dancing with to Sarah McLachlans "Angel"? Pathik? Ajay? Sanjeev? No, most likely you were dancing with Kate, Katherine, Kimberly, Jenna or whichever other white girl you decided to ask as your date.

At the Indian after party, though, 9 times out of 10 by the end of the night you're huddled tight into an Urkel Circle with 5 other Indian guys throwing your arms up in unison to whatever Mariah Carey remix is most culturally salient at the moment. And where are Preity, Payal, Puja and Priyanka? Dancing with each other on the opposite side of the dance floor, of course, mentally plotting the steps for their all-female Kuchipudi dance to be performed at next year's cultural show.