by Amanda Ong

Since 2016, Rangeela Dance Firm has been the premier location for Bollywood fusion dance in Seattle. Rangeela, based by Priyanka Jain Vora, teaches and gives Bollywood, BollyCardio, Bhangra, BollyHop, City Bollywood, Garba Funk, BollyContemp, and BollyClassical dance. 

“I actually needed to create a platform for grownup, post-collegiate dancers to return collectively and never essentially compete, however create dance items collectively, create artwork collectively, share it with our group, train dance workshops, train our routines to adults and youngsters throughout,” Vora stated in an interview with the South Seattle Emerald. “After which additionally carry out across the group to have fun our tradition. Finally, my objective is to protect our Indian tradition and move that on to the following generations. I actually assume that doing that via dance and artwork is a really highly effective method to ship that message.”

Vora is educated within the classical Indian dance Bharatanatyam, which she studied for 11 years along with different types of Indian dance, like Bollywood, Garba, and people. As soon as she reached school, she was captain of the Bollywood fusion dance workforce. There, she was uncovered to different kinds, like up to date and trendy. For a lot of faculties, South Asian dance groups might be intensive about coaching and competitions. After transferring from Boston to Seattle, she based Rangeela as a method to actually connect with the dance group and attain out to the precise inhabitants of post-collegiate dancers who would possibly not know what place dance has of their lives. 

Vora was learning bodily remedy whereas instructing Bollywood cardio lessons on the aspect and choreographing for occasions and weddings. “My private objective was, after school, to maintain dancing and determine the right way to preserve that in my life,” Vora stated. “After which I noticed that there have to be different individuals like me, and that’s how I discovered my group in Seattle, different dancers who share that very same ardour. After which it simply grew and grew and grew, and now we’re a reasonably large group.”

Since then, Rangeela has been featured in an exhibit on the Museum of Historical past and Trade and carried out at main company and nonprofit group occasions, like Boeing, Microsoft, Zillow, Fb, and API Chaya. Rangeela has additionally labored with and carried out for the Seattle Artwork Museum, the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Northwest Folklife Competition, the place they carried out this previous Monday. 

“Our most enjoyable company [event] was Boeing,” Vora stated. “It was a grand opening for his or her new airplane made by Boeing. And that is an Indian airline, so Boeing made that airline, that plane. And so we carried out on the opening gala for that plane. It was fairly cool.”

Rangeela additionally has a thriving YouTube channel. Throughout the pandemic, it started creating YouTube movies, like 15-minute Bollywood cardio and HIIT exercises, a few of which have reached almost 1,000,000 views. Its connections on YouTube have additionally linked it with visitor instructors from everywhere in the world, together with YouTube celeb dancers in addition to well-known choreographers from Bollywood. 

Vora’s ardour about making Bollywood and Indian dance accessible is linked to her personal sturdy connection to bounce. “Dance … for me, personally, is a supply of Vedic meditation,” Vora stated. “Once I dance or after I’m choreographing or directing a bit … it’s like I totally immerse myself into the artwork, which is simply so thrilling.”

Rangeela’s lessons are largely geared towards adults, but it surely additionally hosts lessons for youths — like its upcoming summer season workshop — and lessons even geared towards elders. “I’m a bodily therapist as nicely, so I’m a ladies’s well being bodily therapist, pelvic and girls’s well being,” Vora stated. “So we designed a category for seniors.”

The Indian group of Seattle has offered main assist for the Rangeela Dance Firm group, although anybody is welcome to take lessons at Rangeela, even when they haven’t any Bollywood dance expertise. Vora says that a lot of the Indian group she has met is break up between current immigrants and Indian People raised in america. “No matter our background, we’re all simply equally obsessed with celebrating our tradition via dance,” Vora stated of the group. “To see how comparable we’re, too, in eager to protect the tradition and preserve it going and sharing that with everybody, it’s simply actually rewarding, it actually simply places a smile on our faces on daily basis.” 

Vora says Rangeela is fortunate to have an extremely sturdy workforce, working collectively to do advertising and marketing, choreography, gross sales, and run practices. Its devoted and supportive workforce is sort of a household, and they’re all extraordinarily obsessed with what they do, most juggling their work there with one other full-time job. “They’re in search of a method to launch, a method to get train, a method to be taught, a method to join with different individuals outdoors of labor,” Vora stated. “And I feel it is a actually essential side of their well-being, for health, for happiness, for group, for social causes. A few of my dancers want a dance household. … And we actually welcome them with open arms.”

Greater than something, as the one Bollywood-focused dance firm in Seattle, Rangeela is providing a sort of cultural dance that’s extremely underrepresented within the Pacific Northwest. “We’re really making a change in Seattle, the place there actually wasn’t a whole lot of high-quality Bollywood [and other South Asian] dance,” Vora stated. “There wasn’t a whole lot of actually sturdy and high-quality illustration of the place individuals might go to for choreography for his or her marriage ceremony or to take lessons on a constant foundation and discover these associates who additionally needed to be taught dance after school.”

To attempt dance lessons at Rangeela Dance Firm at 340 fifteenth Ave. E. Suite 101, go to its web site, or enroll your youngsters in its summer season dance workshop sequence by contacting Rangeela over e-mail.

That is one among a sequence of articles sponsored by the Seattle Workplace of Financial Improvement in recognition of Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Amanda Ong (she/her) is a Chinese language American author from California. She is at present a grasp’s candidate on the College of Washington Museology program and graduated from Columbia College in 2020 with levels in artistic writing and ethnicity and race research.

? Featured Picture: Rangeela Dance Firm was based in 2016 by Priyanka Jain Vora. (Photograph: Amit Bhardawaj)

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