ABCD- Anybody can Dance! but Should They?

Too much of a good thing can be…well, repetitive! There is so much dancing around us these days that being a dancer myself, frankly, at the risk of being frowned upon and booed, I have to say, I am a little weary of dancing. And I hasten to add, no, not the act of dancing per se, because that stems from a very visceral place, that anyone who enjoys dancing will attest to. No, I am just weary of the excessive visual representation of it in all manner and form at every flimsy opportunity, turning it into a well-worn cliché. And this is what I attempt to do in this article as I attempt to pin down some of the platitudes surrounding the world of dance, particularly in the Indian pop-cultural-classical context, that have unsettled me enough to rile a bit on paper. Unapologetically, I use the title of a Bollywood film that was released a few years ago, as the title of this article as it has piqued me since the day I set eyes on it. I write from the perspective of an Insider and so the article is based largely on personal experiences and observations. Also, as a self-absolving statement, I'd like to add that while I am all for the democracy of dancing, I am only wondering aloud for various reasons (that I will attempt to explain in the article) when I end with a tag question to the title: But Should They?