The End of an Era

My year at LIPA comes to an end today. It's been a year full of so many things. I learnt a lot, about dance, about living alone, about friendship and love, about competition and surviving in the performing arts industry.

I've learnt a whole range of western styles of dance..Martha Graham technique. Nikolai technique, imporvisation techniques, ballet, jazz, street dance and a little bit of tap dancing(although i'm not quite sure the tap amounted to 2 weeks worth of classes, so I won't count that as learning an art form, but rather learning the theoretical history behind tap dance, which not surprisingly is similar to kathak).

But what I take back with me from here that I will really really cherish and remember forever is not anything LIPA taught me, but what LIPA inadvertently brought into my pathway. The people in it. What never ceased to amaze me every single time I went out with my friends from LIPA was that at any given time there were people from different nationalities there. On the way back from the beach the other day, there were 7 of us, each from a different part of the world - Cataline from Argentina, Snorre from Norway, Nick from England, Graham from America, Richard from Ireland, Luis from Brazil, and me from India. There was so much to learn from all these people. Such tremendous cultural exchanges happened..Linda from Latvia taught me how to cook latvian couscous. Richard taught me Irish. Oh, and the way Richard and Luis proudly wore the kurtas I gave them..it was too sweet! I explained Indian classical music to them, we talked about the social and cultural problems in India at the same time as the situation of women in Egypt and the Magdalen laundries in Ireland which only completely closed down in 1980.

I learnt about how the dance cultures in India and the west are so different. In india, on the day of a show, you don't rehearse. infact, sometimes even on the day before a show, you rest. here, you're in from 9 in the morning for a show that starts at 7.30. In india, a week before the show, you just do 2 hour run throughs and go home and take a hot bath, here..you're still devising and changing things around till the last minute...loads of things like that.

I made really close friends in my dance class..three in particular..Becki Heath (Brown haired becki), Becky Smith (becky blue hair) and Georgia from Greece. They always encouraged me
when the unfamiliarity of the styles got the better of me. I love them dearly!

I also made friends outside my dance class..Richard and Luis, my two best friends and 'babies', Sibel and Nick..two very talented musicians and wonderful people..many many others..I won't be able to name them all..but people like Linda(Latvia), Ulysses(Switzerland), Nadya(Egypt), Josh (who's coming to India in August)...so many people. I have a friend in almost every part of the world now! I think that's amazing!

I'll also never forget the friends I made outside LIPA..my flatmates. Hannah, my twin who I share so much with (Led Zep, Movies, similar mishaps, Forrest Gump and family guy, intoxicated blabbering, COLDPLAY!), Emma who provided support at the most unexpected times (e.g. she cleaned my bloody foot when I couldn't reach it because of my knee injury), Mike who;s gay antics will be etched in my memory forever (I'll NEVER forget that catwalk in the living room!) and Rob, my partner in crime as far as alcohol consumption is concerned (don't be smothering youself to death by passing out on stale pizza again!)

Liverpool has been good to me. I'll miss it.