KOCHI: On the day of her maiden salsa performance, recently, Aswathy Visweswaran could only feel her feet, the collective gaze of the audience and perspiration. It wasn’t so much of a formal performance, she was, after all, wearing a tank top and snug ankle pants.
“However, after the show, my mother was furious! She reminded me of the fact that I’m a mother of two and that it wasn’t nice of me to dance romantically with a man who wasn’t my husband,” laughed Aswathy. While she agrees that salsa is a dance with a fine tinge of romance, she says that it’s experienced only by the audience. For the performers, it’s all about posture, flow of the body, and footwork.
Aswathy’s journey, from a simple Malayali housewife, to a zumba trainer, with her own studio, and a soon-to-be salsa instructor has been an oddly riveting one. Beats ‘N’ Steps, in south Kalamasseri, run by Aswathy, along with her former instructor, Prashanth, offers zumba, aerobics, yoga, contemporary, hip hop and Bollywood. And salsa makes a grand entry soon. A three-hour workshop on Friday marked its inception.
“I thought my little girl might enjoy ballet sessions, and so I took her to ‘Floors’, the school of dance in Panampilly Nagar. That’s when I found that they offered zumba classes for adults, and three years ago, I started zumba lessons,” she said. She had then taken a year long salsa training at Rima Kallingal’s dance school, ‘Mamangam’.
“While I took up zumba for fitness, salsa came as a surprise. It caught my interest and very soon, I was drawn to it,” said Aswathy.
It was when she made an appearence at the Latin Festival Madras that the world of salsa opened right in front of her.
“The air was spirited and people so euphoric, it was infectious! It was three evenings of dance and music, where you dance with many, learning many new forms of salsa,” said Aswathy. Meeting Salsa Madras was a revelation to Aswathy. “They opened the doors of Chennai to social dancing. Now, salsa enthusiasts throng Chennai and they hop from one salsa social to another in the evenings, just to dance! There’s no party, no alcohol, it’s just dance all the way. That’s something I’d like to see in Kochi, as well, and the idea behind starting a Madras Salsa wing in my own studio,” explains Aswathy.
When asked about the most interesting thing about salsa, she had an unpredicted answer. “It teaches men to be courteous to women! It’s a dance where the man leads and the woman follows. So, men have to be careful, delicate and very committed to the task of seeing the dance ritual through, as well as taking care of their partner,” she said.
Bonny Avannur and Arun Srinivasan, of Salsa Madras, who are in Kochi for the workshop, vouch for this too. “And even if men joined the classes with an intention other than dance, eventually they would have shed it,” said the duo. Natalie Tatarinova, the Russian salsa performer, who lives in Thailand, accompanied Arun in demonstrating the dance at the workshop.
Aswathy foresees that in Kerala, where a more conventional atmosphere prevails, dancing with a partner is not something that most people will warm up to easily.
“But that’s what I want to achieve. I always say, if I can do it at 42, anyone can!”