Hip Hop and Trance

Trance is a very personal experrience. You don't really care whether anyone else is dancing along with you. You don't look around. You just listen to the music flow over you, around you, and into you. Before you know it, you are in a trance.

Hip Hop is very different. Hip hop is all about brotherhood - it is about admiring each other's dancing - learning from each other's moves - and about your personal style of dancing.

Thought about this as I danced for the first time in my life to hip hop after nearly 4 hours of trance. That is exactly the way it happened - as long as it was trance, I was in a world all of my own. Only came out of it when i was jostled by somebody on their way to the bar or when I paused to get a drink myself. But when hip hop started and in a few minutes a gang of us had spontaneously formed a circle with this one guy at the center. Man, that guy could sure move. Fluid movements. I'm not sure I could have done it even sober. One by one, all of us got in the center and tried our style. It was like a competition, but not quite. If you are not the best, all you can do is admire the best, and try your best to learn. But again, you can't copy moves. Each move belongs to a style. You take it only if it fits you.

Never enjoyed a party more than last Saturday - the best music that I've heard on a dance floor in a long time. Though it was mostly low bpm and a little dated, and a tad too commercial, it was still trance. And that, in India, is rare.