GrahamSeveral years ago, someone in the Bay Area dance community (maybe Deb Henigson) had the brilliant insight that the rhythms of bhangra, a folk music and dance from India, and schottische, a Bohemian dance popular in Victorian ballrooms, were the same. So here's some schottische music from India. It's worth noting that all three songs are, in true Bollywood fashion, over 5 minutes long. They're also fast, so I'd advise both shortening and slowing them down for dancing.
- Sadhna Sargam et al - Maahi Ve
I was introduced to bhangra at Decadance's Spring Show 2005, where they performed a bhangra-schottische fusion to "Maahi ve." That piece is still one of my favourite Deca numbers, and you can see it at around 1:20 in this video. After checking out the music video for "Maahi Ve" on YouTube and finding out that it was from the film Kal Ho Naa Ho, I actually watched the whole movie to see this colourful, extravagant production in context. - Shankar Mahadevan - Pretty Woman
Turns out out most Bollywood films are long (we're talking over 3 hours) and chock full of singing and dancing. Here's another song from the Kal Ho Naa Ho soundtrack, and I definitely recommend watching the clip(below) if you want a taste of how over-the-top these song-and-dance numbers can be. Graham did a nice edit of "Pretty Woman" which we played at Friday Night Waltz in June.
- Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan, Mahalaxmi Iyer - Rock N Roll Soniye
This is the "Bollywood schottische" that Richard Powers plays most often. I think "soniye" means something like "pretty girl" or "my love" -- it's a term of endearment.