The sad reality

  Dance is a dying art. When an artform is misused in a way to extract likes, shares, comments and exclusive subscriber only content, it loses its authenticity. I see how people over Instagram call dancers horrible names, when all they have done is, dance.

 

Some people, both girls and guys take advantage of the whole situation. In the greed of going viral, they start revealing their body parts in the name of dance. Movements have become about aesthetics, not artistry. But at the end of the day, we are still part of a very patriarchal society, and when lines are crossed, it’s the women who face the social media hate, not the system constantly rewarding such behaviour.

 

The saddest part is how this constant chase for gaining quick fame overshadows real, raw talent. The dancers who have spent years training, learning musicality, technique, rhythm and discipline, end up getting sidelined by trends that come today and vanish tomorrow.

When sensationalism gets attention, sincerity gets lost. Every day I open Instagram, I see the same pattern; a flashy over edited dance reel with barely any real dance, with millions of likes; while a dedicated hip-hop artist teaching old school hip-hop and C-walk, barely reaches a few thousand views. I have seen incredibly skilled performers cancel their classes because there just weren’t enough registrations. Not because they lacked passion or talent, but because they were not “viral” enough.

 

It is so disheartening to see how the very space that could have uplifted artists has instead turned into a popularity contest. Authentic dancers are not competing on the basis of the craft, but on visibility. It does make me wonder, when did art become a measurable metric? When did we start valuing reach over creativity? Like, sometimes the demotivation hits such a high that I ask myself, why did I spend years learning an artform and its nuances when all you need is to shake and shimmy infront of the camera to be known by people?

 

Somewhere, we have definitely forgotten that dance was never meant to be consumed, it was meant to be felt. The essence of any artform lies in that unfiltered connection between the dancer, the music and the emotion. Likes and views will never be enough to measure that.

 

Sometimes, I also feel we as an audience have failed too. Even we engage with dance content that is borderline vulgar and unnecessary. With this growing craze of following trends, we forget that every trending move does not teach us technicality. People I know personally, choose classes based only on how viral a choreographer has become. But, if you actually scroll through those pages, you will realize the virality was never a reflection of their talent, its just Instagram algorithm doing its job. However mediocre the choreography is, people rush to their classes just

for an Instagram story of “looked who I danced with”. I get it, the excitement of meeting someone famous. But where is the learning?

 

When did dancing stop being less about learning and more about following trends and trends only?

 

It breaks my heart to see how one of my favorite artforms has been reduced to 30-second-long clips, a cold battle for validation. Somewhere, between all those trending audios and steps sounding and looking the same, the soul of dance disappeared.

 

But it is not too late. Maybe if we as viewers start prioritizing authenticity over algorithms, is we decide to applaud skills and completely disengage with the unnecessary, the artform can revive. Because dance does not die when people stop performing but it will when we stop feeling it.

 

And I, for one, refuse to stop feeling it, sooner or later.

 

Shreya Roy Choudhury