Belgian Bollywood dancing troupe to perform in Chennai

It was a long time ago — Ayla Joncheere, Laura Neyskens and I met at a Kalbelia workshop when we were just teenagers and after doing this Rajasthani style for a little while, people asked us if we can do some Bollywood dancing because it will help connect with a larger audience. We agreed and immediately began to like the energetic music. There wasn’t anyone to teach Bollywood dancing in Belgium at the time so we would just try to imitate the steps in the videos.

We began doing small performances but five years ago we decided to make it a professional dance company and Bollylicious was born. Choreography-wise, we make all the movements together. Our experience with Indian dance grew so we combine those steps with our diverse expertise in salsa, contemporary, flamenco, Oriental dance forms and so on. Rajasthani styles like Kalbelia and Ghoomar are the base for all our fusion dances. We try to be as original as possible so we very rarely replicate steps these days unless a song has a signature move.

Today, Julie Thomas who also specialises in contemporary dance and Sooraj Subramaniam, a trained Odissi and Bharatanatyam dancer is on board with us.

We’re fond of the traditional styles or old style costumes so we don’t do anything modern.

I know you’re currently on an India tour so what has the response been like so far? And what do you think of the places you’ve performed in and the people you’ve met?

It’s always really nice to perform in India. Back home, we get booked to fill up slots during other book productions or theatres. The audiences usually don’t have any awareness about Bollywood dancing and that’s why we’re trying to create some knowledge. In India, the people are very appreciative and are actually surprised to see our fusion dances because they find our techniques quite original.

We’ve performed at many venues across the country— in Rajasthan, we’ve danced at the Jaipur Literature Festival, in heritage hotels, for the Maharaja of Jodhpur, for our own king and queen when they were in Delhi, we’ve performed for Amitabh Bachchan, sometimes at weddings. We don’t really have a preference because we enjoy dancing at various venues and meet so many interesting people.

In Chennai, we’ll be bringing a mix of two of our productions called Bombay Express and Sitara. One can get to see some semi-classical Bollywood dancing, fusion, traditional folk items, Mughal-e-Azam kind of items, an Odissi piece, Rajasthani Bollywood and Western contemporary.

We really like a lot of people but Madhuri Dixit is on the top of our list because she’s the queen of Bollywood dancing. We nearly got to meet her once but it didn’t happen so it’ll be nice to see her.