In today’s session we have been continuing to learn elements of traditional Indian dance, focusing on Bollywood hand and gesture dance and traditional stick dancing (Dandiya)
Today we re-caped all stick dance phase learnt so far and continued to learn a new one. There were lots of ‘use your Left hand’ and ‘Rights hand’ being discussed and I’m pretty sure we all got our lefts and right wrong at some point in the session. We were also having to really count and keep a steady pace with the movements to ensure we were moving correctly. After 35 minutes our minds were boggled but we had indeed mastered 3 different phrases, to music! One participant explained that although her mind was ‘Blown’ she had thoroughly enjoyed the challenge e and felt well accomplished by the end of the task.
We moved on to continue our conversation around Bollywood hand gestures, re-capping a few and then discussing the similarities between Bollywood hands and Sign Language.We spoke about how the delicate hang gesture in sign language could be danced just as beautifully as the Bollywood hand gestures.
Using the sign language alphabet i asked each participant to spell their name- or a nick name if they felt it was too long! Each participant successfully learnt their name/ nick name and was able to remember some of the letters.
I then asked them to dance these letters. We all agreed the sign language was just as unique and powerful. All participants found this task very interesting as none knew any sign language. All participants actually asked to keep their sign language alphabet sheets so I’m looking forward to some signing in our next session!
Overall we had a great session with great energy and enthusiasm.