Dance! (Even If It’s Your First Time)

Elilpragas Amirthalingam formally performed his very first dance last month, on his wedding day.

“I was nervous, but he was more nervous,”says Amirthalingam’s wife, Sinthuja Elilpragas.

‘When the wedding began he kept asking me: ‘When is the dance, when is the dance.’ I said ‘I don’t know I don’t have the agenda.’ When we were cutting the cake and he asked ‘Is the dance next?’ I told him: ‘Just give me the cake and we will talk about the dance later’.”

“ Elil has never danced, I’ve never seen him dance before, and I’m marrying him,” Sinthuja says. “The first time I saw him dance was on the first day of our dancing class.”

Marring a man who cannot dance may not be a big deal, however, Sinthuja knows that Elil will need some professional help if they are going to preform a perfect dance on their wedding day. Their dance teacher, Shalini Kumaraguru, is a choreographer and instructor who was born and raised in Canada, yet has a great passion for classical Indian dance and culture.

“I love dancing, so I started with my own culture,” she says. “It was very interesting because a lot of the movements that we do, a lot of dances and songs that we perform have something to do with stories. How the couple fell in love, how the woman waits for the guy... So I thought, why not learn a little bit more about it?”

In addition to receiving extensive training in the classical Indian dance form of Bharathanatyam, Kumaraguru learned many other dance forms including Bhangara, Bollywood, Hip Hop, Reggae and Kathak. She offers private lessons to engaged couples who need help on the dancing part of their wedding day.

When Kumaraguru meets a couple, the first thing she does is to ask them to join one of her classes. It helps her to get an idea of the couple’s knowledge of dancing and what kinds of movements they are comfortable with. If someone is good at Bollywood, for example, Kumaraguru will suggest a Bollywood dance for the wedding.

Although Kumaraguru gives her best suggestions according to a couple’s dance background, the couple are always free to choose their favorite music whether they are good at it or not. If a couple want something out of ordinary but difficult to learn, such as Salsa, Kumaraguru will break the dance into small sections and make a time-line for the couple to follow.

What Sinthuja and Amirthalingam learned was a South Asian style dance with some elements of Hip-hop and Jazz, it’s a slow dance with a lot of spinning, lifting and catching.

“ Shalini had a lot of patience, especially for him (Amirthalingam),” Sinthuja says. “It was very difficult for him to naturally walk and do a spin, so we spent a whole class to teach him how.”

The couple spent two hours with Kumaraguru every Sunday since May, and their weekly practice time increased to four hours during the few weeks before the wedding. It’s a time-consuming task for couples to prepare a dance performance for their wedding, especially when they have no dance background. Kumaraguru suggests couples to communicate with their teacher continually and spend at least two month practicing together. The good news is, based on Kumaraguru’s experience, the hard work will always be worth it.

“It’s your chance to relax and be able to enjoy a few moments with your loved one, it’s something that gets the audience going and helps you relax as well,” Kumaraguru says. She believes that when a bride is standing in the spotlight with the one that she’s going to spend the rest of her life with, neither of them will ever forget that first dance.

“So finally, we started our dance in front of our family and friends,” Sinthuja says. “Everybody said he looked natural and elegant, and all the pictures looked very nice too.”

#weddingday #wedding #dance #firstdance