A young woman strides confidently down the street. She holds herself with pride and purpose. Her headphones on, she snaps her fingers to an apparently catchy beat. She catches herself before executing a shimmie and turn. She is a Bollywood dancer somewhere in the world.

Hardly a day goes by without a new article about the global popularity of Bollywood dance popping up somewhere in a newspaper, magazine, or on the Internet. Titled tellingly with catchphrases like “Bollywood Dance Mania” and “Bollywood Dance Classes are Hot,” these articles invariably point to the growing presence of Bollywood dance on a local level. The burgeoning business of the Bollywood dance instructional video market distributed in DVD and online formats also clearly point to a growing demand for Bollywood dance.

Today, it seems that Bollywood dances are taught in virtually every major urban center in the world. In India, specialized schools and fitness centers offer film-inspired dance classes to members of the emergent middle class. Outside India, in cities like London, Berlin, Chicago, and Melbourne, instructors, often only marginally connected to the film industry, set up classes to meet the demand of South Asian and other audiences to learn and perform movements they have seen (and been enthralled by) in films. Driven by local demands, Bollywood dance classes even exist in cities, like Prague or Geneva, where South Asian populations are rather small. Bollywood dance is fast becoming a diverse and popular global movement phenomenon. Yes, Bollywood dance does indeed appear to have taken the world by “storm.”

Though dances, as choreographed movements set to musical accompaniment, appeared in films soon after the introduction of film technology to India in 1896, the use of Bollywood dance as a term to describe dances choreographed to Hindi film songs is much more recent. First references to Bollywood Dance as a movement category date back to the early 1990s and describe the hybrid, yet Indian dance based, movements used in Hindi films. The past few years have continued to bring new innovations to the world of Bollywood dance as choreographers trained in Indian classical and contemporary dance styles enrich and combine movements and meanings to create new and unexpected work. Sometimes spiritual, sometimes hip-hop-like, contemporary Bollywood dance is an eclectic, catchy, yet culturally rooted dance form.

In effect, the rise of Bollywood dance coincides with pro-market economic reforms in India, the simultaneous coming of age of the Indian diaspora and technological innovations that increased the global circulation of Hindi films to previously unimaginable levels. Today many Indian film song-and-dance sequences, from the early days of Chandralekha to the latest as-yet-unreleased Bollywood blockbuster, are easily accessed through Youtube’s treasure chest.

But, as we enthusiastically shimmy, thrust, and jiggle to the latest catchy Bollywood beat, isn’t it about time that we begin to peel back the glossy appealing veneer of Bollywood dance? This may be the moment when we stop to think more about what drives the global trend, and perhaps even more importantly, how its popularity affects those who make it an important part of their lives. In fact, it is the juxtaposition between the apparent global mobility of dance content in Hindi films and the apparent local rooted-ness dancers who partake in the study and live performance of Bollywood dance may move us closer to an understanding of this worldwide popular phenomenon. Whether it is on the production or consumption sides, Bollywood dance is, at the end of the day, about the people whose lives are touched by its global circulation.

That said, I now present three stories compiled, created and defined by the global circulation of Bollywood dance. These stories grew out of my in-depth and ongoing research on this popular phenomenon. It is my pleasure to introduce to you: Tatiana, Manjita and Suruchi.

Tatiana in Bombay

“This film is going to be a big hit. It has all the right ingredients.” Bosco, of the Bosco and Caesar film choreography duo, raises his voice to carry above the grinding rhythms of an on-set rehearsal of The Race in Mumbai. Bosco sits in the director’s chair and scrutinizes the monitor as his assistants work through four counts of choreography with Bipasha Basu and Katrina Kaif, two fashionable Bollywood starlets. Intermittently, he mutters camera angle instructions into his microphone. His voice echoes through the set—a tunnel with a smoke machine and fan—but is drowned out. After several unsuccessful attempts to make himself heard above the commotion, Bosco sighs and walks over to the cinematographer standing next to the camera. The directors continue to sip their tea and watch all activity through the monitor. They do not interfere with any of the activities on set.

“Bollywood dance has changed.” Bosco returns. “You see the songs are more fast cut, more racy.” Scantily-clad chorus line dancers begin to file in along the peripheries of the set. Indian men and foreign, overwhelmingly blonde, women arrive together. The Indian female dancers arrive last and stand off towards a corner and chat as they adjust each other’s costumes. The chorus line dancers take their positions on the set. Blonde dancers are assigned to the front rows behind the stars. Indian dancers fill up the background. “Do you think we have a post-colonial hang-up?” Bosco’s manager comments, “You should write about that.” The stars take their positions and “quiet on set” resounds through the tunnel.

The last few years have witnessed the arrival of foreign—mostly white, blonde and female—dancers in Hindi film chorus lines. The first waves of these dancers came from countries of the former Soviet Union. Many foreign dancers rotated in and out of India every six months to avoid visa complications as agents coordinated their local contracts and visas. Recently, dancers from other countries, like the UK, Spain, Iceland, and South Africa arrived to meet the demand for foreign dancers in Hindi films. The initial demand for foreign dancers in Bombay was driven by logistics. Choreographer Feroz Khan explains, “it was cheaper to bring the dancers here than to take the whole crew there….” when shooting a dance sequence set abroad. But the appeal of foreign dancers in Hindi films now goes beyond these early logistical considerations as foreign dancers meet a demand fueled by Bollywood’s globally savvy veneer.

Today, several of these dancers, who initially arrived on short-term contracts, have actually settled more permanently in Mumbai. “I came here first a few years,” as Tatiana, a Russian dancer explains to me as we chat in the dressing room in between takes. She leans forward, studies her make-up in the mirror, and continues to speak as she adjusts her costume. She grew up in St. Petersburg and started her dance training at a very early age. “I studied ballet,” she remarks coolly. She struggled to make a living in Russia until she met an agent who made arrangements for dancers to work on Hindi film sets. Tatiana’s initial dance stint in Mumbai allowed her to make friends who told her that she could “make good money” as a Russian dancer in Mumbai. Since then, Tatiana danced in over a hundred Hindi films but says that she “is not learning much in terms of dance.”

Today, Tatiana feels at home in India. She shares a flat in Andheri, a Mumbai suburb, with two other Russian dancers. It is here that she gets to enjoy a lifestyle that would not have been possible for her in Russia. “I have a maid and live a good life,” she explains. She spends most of her days on sets also finds professional engagements in the city’s vibrant night life – as a dancer at private parties, fashion shows and nightclubs. “There is so much work,” she laughs.

Manjita in Kathmandu

Manjita, a young Nepali woman, walks purposefully down a street in Kathmandu, Nepal. The neon blinking red light of the XXX Dance Bar advertises to a nearly abandoned street. The bar is dimly lit, with a mirrored stage on the far end. A noisy, scratchy Hindi film song blares through the speakers. Manjita runs between the tables straight to the stage. She turns her back towards the audience, runs her fingers over her legs, upwards past her waist, until her fingers intertwine in her hair. Her hips begin to sway. She performs for an overwhelmingly male audience.

In the dressing room of the XXX Dance Bar, Pooja, another dancer at the bar, hurriedly applies powder under a harsh neon light. “Bollywood songs are what we dance the most. Different dancers specialize in different moves.” She adjusts her miniskirt and checks the tension in her bra straps. “We practice our dance moves at home, in front of the TV, and then come here and perform.” The bar manager pokes his head into the dressing room to tell us that they are about to start. Pooja nods and takes one last look towards the mirror. As she heads towards the door, she pauses, “… and didi [older sister], we know all about AIDS, how it’s transmitted and all. We are not like that.” She laughs as the door swings shut behind her. But her comment makes clear that bar dancers in Kathmandu bear the brunt of the sexual stigma associated with dance in Nepal, a stigma exacerbated by the looming AIDS epidemic in the country.

Dance bars have rapidly become a key element of Nepal’s nightlife and compete for clients among the dohori bars featuring Nepali folk songs and dances and cabin restaurants where guests have the option of dining in private cabins. For non-governmental organizations (NGOs) monitoring the situation, the sectioned-off cabin restaurants are the most “dangerous” for female employees and are subject to frequent police raids. Select waitresses from cabin restaurants “graduate” to dance bars where they may be pressured into providing additional sexual services to their customers. Bar dancers occupy the highest position in the adult entertainment sector of Kathmandu’s nightlife economy.

On her break, Manjita walks out into the audience and mingles with the audience. She arrived in Kathmandu several years ago, driven to migration through Nepal’s decade-long violent internal conflict. Initially supported by relatives, she made her way through the city and found temporary work in Kathmandu’s urbanizing industries. She even had a temporary stint painting Thankas (Buddhist religious paintings) for sale to tourists. Actually, it was there that Manjita made a friend who told her that she could make a lot more money—even ten times the amount she made with her current work—by becoming a waitress in the dance bar. This was how Manjita entered the dance bar world.

After waitressing for a few months, Manjita ventured on to the blinking and mirrored dance floor. “At first, I was very shy,” she explains, “But then I got used to it. Now, I get on the stage. I dance and all my problems go away.” Manjita explains that her world now revolves around the dance bar. This is where her friends are, and this is where she spends most of her free time. “Usually, I go over in the afternoon and hang out until it’s time to perform.” Manjita is intentially ambiguous about her personal life. “I don’t want to marry. Ever,” she insists vehemently. Eventually, she confides that her heart was actually broken by a man, who she thought would marry her. He had promised her that she would not have to work. The relationship ended abruptly when her fiancé disappeared. “I don’t know what he heard about me,” her voice breaks.

Three months later, I return to Kathmandu and set out to find Manjita. The doors of the XXX Bar are boarded up. A watchman from a neighboring building approaches me as I hover by the entrance uncertainly. “Did the bar close?” I ask him. He nods and explains that the bar closed a few months ago as a result of a police raid. I ask him if he knows anything about the employees. He shakes his head and points me towards a nearby cold store. The shopkeeper, a young man in his twenties, tries to be helpful. The owner of the bar is now in England. “What about the dancers?” I ask. They are around. He gestures to the winding alleys of Thamel, Kathmandu’s tourist hub. “Do you know if Manjita is around?” I pry and learn that Manjita told everyone she was going to Mumbai.

Suruchi in Los Angeles

In January 2009, NBC rolled out a new dance reality show tellingly called Superstars of Dance. Hosted by Riverdance star Michael Flatley and created by executive producers Nigel Lithgoe and Simon Fuller, the show comprised of a dance competition between professional dance teams chosen to represent Argentina, Australia, South Africa, United States, Ireland, Russia, China, and significantly India.

After its much publicized premiere, the show ran into some controversy as questions surfaced regarding the background of dancers. “Does a team have to come from India to be Indian?” some audience members asked as they learned that many of the dancers were actually drawn from diasporic communities based in Los Angeles.

Still, India’s participation in the Superstars of Dance competition was a much-touted event in the Indian community in the United States. The fact that the whole team, with the notable exception of the soloists, comprised of dancers from Nakul Dev Mahajan’s (NDM) Bollywood dance troupe became a topic of much discussion, as dances drawn from Hindi films assumed their place next to Kathak and Bharat Natyam, the pillars of Indian classical dance. “Who could think it was right to put Bollywood dance next to classical dance like that?” a stalwart classical dance supporter lamented to me as the show aired. In the end, the fairly early elimination of the Bollywood dance troupe stood stood out against two classical dance soloists (Mythili Prakash in Bharat Natyam and Amrapali Ambegaokar) who held on until the final round. Regardless of the final outcome, the presence of Bollywood dance at this competition, and it’s somewhat problematic self-promotion as an international dance event, stands out as a significant milestone for Hindi-film-inspired dance in the United States.

Suruchi, a young American woman of Indian origin, was a proud member of the Superstars of Dance Bollywood team. Born and raised in Orange County, Suruchi began her dance training when she was four years old. Her initial dance training was in Kathak, a dance form she continues practice with reverence. “I wanted to get away from the classical thing. I wanted to try something new,” she laughs when I ask why she decided to transition to film dance. Though her decision to audition for NDM’s Bollywood dance troupe initially conflicted with her classical dance training, she now sees her previous training as an asset that provided continuity to her entry into film dance. “You don’t need to have Indian dance training prior to Bollywood, but I think it definitely helps,” Suruchi explains. She speaks with pride about her Bollywood dance. She sees her practice as a way to represent the Indian side of her heritage. “I think it’s wonderful that you can see our culture on prime time TV in the US,” she asserts.

When she is not training for the next show or TV appearance through NDM, Suruchi is a full time college student working towards a Marketing degree. She dabbles in modeling, acting, and advertisements and dreams of a full-time dance related career. “The great thing is that I don’t have to go to India to do Bollywood anymore. I can just stay right here and dance in Los Angeles.”

From Mumbai to Los Angeles, Bollywood dance is now a global dance movement. Yet, it is the dancers influenced by this phenomenon that really breathe life into its complex and interconnected meanings. The global scope of the industry brought Tatiana to India where her blonde-and-blue eyes and ballet training are in demand by dance directors and producers. Sexualized Bollywood remixes integrate Manjita into Kathmandu’s night entertainment economy. In Los Angeles, the global circulation of Bollywood dance brings opportunities to second generation Indian-Americans, eager to perform their hyphenated identities on national television. Local meanings, persistent inequalities, and global circulation intersect to create the world of Bollywood dance.

Dr.Sangita Shresthova is a Czech/Nepali scholar, filmmaker, dancer and media specialist. She is the programming director of the annual Prague Bollywood Festival and founder of Bollynatyam