BENGALURU: It may have been two weeks since the Dance World Cup concluded in Braga, Portugal, but Avani Bipinkumar still remembers the moment she held up the Indian flag after her win at the event. “When you’re standing there representing India, it feels really good. You want your country’s anthem to play, you want to win and you want to make your country proud,” says the 14-year-old student of Bangalore School for Performing Arts, who won the bronze medal in the junior solo national folk dance category.
Bipinkumar wasn’t the only one who razzled and dazzled at the world cup. Out of the 6,000 global participants, 81 individuals represented India and won three gold, three silver and four bronze medals. The Indian dance team was led by Lourd Vijay, a prominent face in the dance scene in India and founder of Lourd Vijay Dance Studio (LVDS), and stayed in Portugal for about a week between June 27 and July 6.
For some of the participants, this wasn’t their first time taking part in the world cup. The dance team (Sampada Shah and Neha Annie Biju) from One Move that won the silver medal in the children duet hip hop division came fifth last year in the world cup in Spain. They trained with regulated diets and workouts for an entire year and have now secured the silver medal. “Hip hop is one of the toughest categories to win in and this feels out of the world,” said Sushil Jay, founder of One Move, with a wide beam.
With this year’s winning streaks, India’s ranking at the dance world cup was higher than what it was the last seven years. The challenges, however, were many, the main one being the sheer lack of funding for the logistics of the team, said Vijay, who is looking forward to seeing more private as well as government support. He holds the qualifier rounds for the international world cup in India. According to him, it’s hard enough for people to come to Bengaluru for the qualifying rounds and even harder to go to a European country. “Many of them spend three days in a train to come to Bengaluru,” he said.
Concurred Shilpa Somanathan, artistic director of D4U studios, who said the funding schools and the government allot for dance and the artistic field takes a backseat when compared to sports.
Guru Datha, co-founder of BSPA (full form), recalled the trip to Portugal and said the people there were extremely supportive. “Other countries also have problems with funding but once we see how they are dealing with these problems, we can figure out how to answer our problems,” he said.