By Sadia Mohaimin

Dance to “Chamma Chamma”

By Sadia Mohaimin

Growing up, my parents instilled in me an appreciation for Bengali culture that I have carried on to this day, and thus, my Bengali culture greatly shaped my identity. I was sent to Bangla School alongside elementary school in order to learn how to read and write Bangla as well as learn the art of Bengali Folk dancing. It was from then on, that my love for dance grew.

This love expanded beyond the Bengali Folk dancing realm and made its way into the world of Bollywood. I vividly remember my older sister, cousin and me re-watching Bollywood movies from the 1990s and 2000s multiple times. We would replay the dance numbers over and over, dancing along to the choreography in our living room until we had the routine memorized. As we got older, our nostalgia for the 1990s and 2000s Bollywood movies remained. We found ourselves dancing to these very songs at our family’s dance-filled celebrations. We recently decided to take our love for dance from live events to producing dance cover videos on YouTube. This introduced a whole different layer into our dance work. Beyond choreography, we were pushed to think about direction, set location, outfit selection and more.

This piece, “Chamma Chamma” was one of the latest pieces my sister, cousin and I produced. It is a dance cover to a classic Bollywood song from the 1998 Indian film, “China Gate.” The song was sung by Alka Yagnik and performed on screen by actress Urmila Matondkar. The actress noted that she wore over 30 lbs. of jewelry for this song!

In our rendition, we took pieces of the original choreography while adding in our own flare. We wore lehengas and oxidized jewelry to match the original Banjaran look the actress had on for the dance –although our jewelry was not anywhere near 30 lbs! I hope to continue creating dance covers and re-picturize classic Bengali and Bollywood songs.

To watch the full video, visit this YouTube link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp41XRO-nxs

Sadia Mohaimin is a rising second-year medical student at the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine. Sadia’s scientific interests include focusing on reducing health disparities in underserved and disadvantaged communities through culturally-tailored methods. She is an aspiring physician who hopes to practice preventive care with a socially-informed perspective in primary care settings.