“From a young age, I was always extremely interested in dancing, and I’ve been dancing for over twelve years. I love being able to dance, and it’s a great outlet for stress and other things I have going on in school and outside. Additionally, classical dancing is my favorite because everything, even down to the smallest hand movements, has a meaning that you can express through your dancing and facial expressions.
Natya mainly focuses on classical dancing, but we also like to do fusions a lot as well with more modern music to appeal to the audience, since classical dancing is usually very religious.
I decided to try out for Natya my freshman year because I really wanted to be a part of a dance team, and I was glad to see that there was one dedicated to classical dancing. As captain, my favorite part about being on Natya is definitely the team environment that we have and seeing all of our teammates come together, regardless of their grade. I also really like the fact that we get to go to a bunch of different shows and see other dance teams from different schools all around the Bay Area. The hardest part about being on a dance team is the time commitment, as being on a team already requires a lot of time to practice for all the performances we have throughout the year. On top of that, our team has 18 dancers, so it can be really hard to find times that everyone is available and to have everyone come and have enough practice. Something else that’s difficult is that a lot of our dancers come from different classical dance backgrounds, such as Bharatnatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, and more. Because of this, not everyone picks up the same moves the same way, so it can take time to make sure everyone gets the choreography down. …