Taking to the floor

Sujan and some 600 students like him in Chennai do not attend dance classes after school or during summer holidays. Instead, they learn to dance in school as part of the regular curriculum.

Sujan enjoys the privilege of being taught by possibly one of the best dance schools in Chennai - The 'John Britto Dance School.'

John Britto, the owner of the school, sends his teachers to three major schools in Chennai and they are part of the faculty at these schools.

Says Britto: "Learning to dance should not interfere with regular education. So we have evolved a system where dance would become a part of the school curriculum itself."

Sujan's experience reflects a new phenomenon: Chennai, widely regarded as a highly conservative city, is swinging "" literally. Cutting across age groups, Chennaites seem to have fallen in love with western styles of dancing. School going and college going children along with their parents have taken to dancing like never before. That, in turn, has triggered off a dancing school boom.

Says R. Baskar, a partner at Hello Friends, which also sends dance instructors to homes: "Around three or four years ago, there were only 30-odd dance schools in Chennai. Today, there are over 100 dance schools. Most of them were started by former students of these schools. A rough estimate would place the number of students at over 5,000 in Chennai today."

However, not all of them are pure dance schools "" many do other things too. Says Juliet Abelincoln, who runs Sanju School of Arts: "Western style dancing apart, we also offer classes in painting and Bharat Natyam and singing and a host of fine arts."

According to some estimates, the dance school industry in Chennai clocks up an annual turnover of over Rs 1 crore. Evidence of just how prosperous the business has become comes from Britto.

On an average, Britto pays his 12 dance instructors Rs 20,000 a month and takes home close to Rs 1.5 lakh every month "" after taxes.

Britto brandishes some other numbers too. Apart from teaching dancing at schools, Britto's dance company has three centres in Chennai and each of these teaches about 200 students ranging from 5 to 50 years of age every month. At the peak, the numbers can reach 500.

Nor is this a summer holiday phenomenon. Summer, in fact, says Britto, is the lean period. "Today, learning to dance is no more just a summer hobby. Students are looking at dancing as a serious career option, says Britto, not just as choreographists for Bollywood but as performing artists who literally globe trot.

Dancing schools are starting to globe trot too, or at least spread their wings. Says Prasanna Kumar, who owns the city's other big dance school, Swingers: "We started with just six students in 1999 and today we have over 1,000 students at five centres. Swingers runs similar dance schools in Kuwait and Dubai."

Adds Manish, one of Swinger's instructors: "Next month we are going to make Mumbai rock." Swingers has already opened branches at Bangalore and Hyderabad.

To be sure, dance schools don't have a uniform basis for charging their students. Sanju School of Arts charges Rs.250 for eight sessions every month. Swingers charges each student a flat Rs 700 a month.

"We do not discriminate between the young and the old or the style they wish to learn. We follow a one-size-fit-for-all model," says Kumar.

Britto, on the other hand, charges Rs 2,000 per semester (a year has three semesters) for classic dances (ballet, for instance). Britto offers a wide range of styles, including hip hop, club salza, merengue, paso doble, bango, bolero, mambo, the waltz, the rhumba, the fox trot, ball room dancing, the cha-cha...the list almost seems endless. "We are also planning to introduce the east and west coast swings very soon," Britto says proudly.

Still, Chennai's two big dance schools seem to have decided not to compete against each other. They have some sort of an informal agreement on not opening schools in the same locality within the city. Says Britto: "More than making money, which is obviously one of the reason for running this business, we would also like to ensure that the dance learning culture does not die a pre-mature death owing to unnecessary competition."