In my previous post I talked about how I discovered breaking/ b-boying through the interesting people I met. That was the point in my life where I was looking at universities to further my education. In what subject? I had no clue to be honest but as an Indian kid that’s something that you do after school. You go to a good college then immediately do an MBA where top companies swoop you up and you get a good job. Not only did I not know what career I wanted to pursue, I didn’t even have a subject that I was really interested in. I ended up attending St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai University from 2004-2007 which is when my level of dedication and commitment to dance got more serious.
The Inter College Festival Circuit
College festivals in Mumbai were at a much larger scale than Delhi and other cities. My college St. Xavier’s happened to have one of the most popular and largest events in terms of participation. There was theatre, music, dance, sport and a lot of events. In the dance category Street Dance was an event I had entered in with our college team. This is what expanded my horizon. Little did I know how the response would be and the level of networking that I did over the next three years. Of course, it increased my popularity with girls and every year in August they would look forward to seeing me in action. Looking back now no one really did breaking/ b-boying and after I taught a few people in my college it spread to other colleges. The only frame of reference was the movie You Got Served
Soon the street dance event had breakers in each college team. A few years later college festivals added breaking/ b-boying as an independent category. I ended up on the judging panel one year in around 2010 I think. I can’t explain the feeling I got sitting in the judge’s seat and watching what I had started grown into a culture that is widespread in India today.
Meeting Mario
Not many people know this name in the Indian breaking circuit. Mario Vaz was a guy in my college in a different division to mine whom I met only in my second year attending Xavier’s. He was interested to learn and he was one of the first few people that I introduced to the dance. By nature, Mario was very shy and didn’t really like too much attention. He was hungry to learn and was a really strong guy. Now that I had a partner in crime, Mario and I use to practice in college all year round. I was motivated to practice harder and focus on being a well-rounded dancer because we only had a few moves and patches as we called it. He was form Mumbai and lived in the suburbs quite far from college almost at the other end of the City.
Kundu Dance Company
The third and last year of college was even more eventful for Mario and me as the dance committee got a dancer form New York who was of Indian Origin and went by the name Tony (Prosenit Guy Kundu). Usually the dance routines were choreographed by students themselves. He had formed a dance troupe Kundu Dance Company in Mumbai which was why he was in town. Kundu as we used to call him later was very versatile and danced multiple styles- Popping, Locking, Old School Hip Hop, Breaking, House. He helped me a lot with my dancing skills and I eventually went onto join his dance troupe where we would perform at night clubs and get paid. This is where I started earning while I was studying. The best part was it didn’t even feel like work!
By the way Kundu gave me that fresh haircut!
That’s not the peak of my career. I told myself “’l’ll do a gap year and see where dancing takes me” Long story short, I danced professionally for 4 years. I’ll share the next chapter in my next post that should be up next week.
Previous Posts
A Journey Into Hip Hop: Part 1-How I Got Into Dance- @islandboi/a-journey-into-hip-hop-part-1-how-i-got-into-dance
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