There is a saying in the Tango community — You do not find Tango, Tango finds you. Kiran Sawhney says that is precisely what happened with her. One of the only professionally trained Tango instructors in India, Kiran had a chance encounter with Tango when an Argentine Tango instructor visited the fitness studio she runs for a workshop.
“That was the first time I actually saw Tango. And I didn’t even like it! Now, not a day goes by when I don’t do the Tango and not a moment goes by when I am not thinking about it. It is my life and breath,” Kiran tells you.
It has now been 14 years since Kiran came in touch with Tango. Once she started doing it herself, she fell in love with this sensuous dance form from Latin America. She pursued her passion and went on to learn from over 20 world renowned dancers and performed at various Tango festivals all over the world.
She took teacher training with Daniel Trenner in the US where she understood that dancing and teaching are two very different things. After that, she came to Delhi and started the New Delhi Tango School in GK II. Here, she teaches the Tango as well as organises milango, which is a Tango social.
Although her clientele primarily includes expats (as she is associated with the Spanish and Argentine Embassies), Tango as a dance form is slowly but surely becoming popular in India. “Tango requires a certain degree of intimacy between the two sexes, which is taboo in India. And I am the only person who is running something like this. But I am trying my best. We’ve had two Tango festivals so far,” she elaborates.
Recalling the hardest things she has had to deal with yet, the most obvious thing is that not many people know about Tango and even if they do, the sensuality of the dance form possibly makes them hesitant to try it.
She also recalls fondly the time she spent with Daniel Trenner: “He stays in Florence, US, and he invites people to come stay at his home, where his studio is located. It is a gurukul atmosphere and much like the guru-shishya parampara from India, very gruelling. He made us work extremely hard, but he also acted as a father figure when we felt we couldn’t take it anymore.”
However, Kiran’s journey with dance began much before Tango found her. Since the age of eight, when she stayed in Jalandhar, she learnt classical Indian dance styles like Kathak, Bharat Natyam and Odissi. In fact, she completed her Kathak training within two years only. She also learnt various Western styles like Jazz, Salsa and Bachata, but she says that after doing the Tango, she can’t imagine doing these fast-paced styles.
She opened her Delhi studio only after she got married and moved to Delhi in 1991. Ask her if her two sons, 23 and 22-years-old, also do the Tango and she promptly replies: “I would love it if they did. But they are really not interested. My husband learnt a bit only to please me. But he did encourage me to go to Buenos Aires to learn the style better. In fact, he went along with me.”
Kiran tells you that, like everything else, the Indian case is different for learning Tango too. Generally it requires people with a mature mindset. In the West it is people in their 30s who come to learn, but in India, there are 18-year-olds who want to learn it as well.
Currently, she has two tango partners and she is preparing some more of her students to become instructors. But that’s not all that is keeping her busy. She runs her full time fitness and Tango classes. She has already started planning the third Tango festival.
She is also writing a book on Tango which is expected to be out by the end of this year. “The book is about my journey as a female Tango dancer in India, how I got into it, about the difficulties I faced trying to bring it here. It’s also informative in the sense that it will tell you what it’s all about, the codes of conduct associated with it and other things like that. So it is personal as well as informative,” Kiran elaborates.
The article also got published in The Pioneer Newspaper – http://www.dailypioneer.com/sunday-edition/sunday-pioneer/backpack/time–to-tango.html
