Shall we dance?

1- Normal position: Gentleman (Right) — Lady (Left)

As they danced in the ballroom in Ankara, the well dressed gentleman leading the beautiful lady through a succession of graceful twists and turns, their movements were perfectly in sync. It was at that moment that Hazan realised that he wanted to learn how to dance.  A recent graduate of the IBA, Karachi, Hazan had sold his jeep to pay for a vacation to Turkey. “I visited a dance school on my trip and when I saw those two people have this amazing conversation through dance, I immediately decided to extend my stay in Turkey and enrolled to learn ballroom dancing,” he says.

Now, back in Karachi, Hazan is the Assistant Vice President of a local private bank by day but by night you can find him twisting and twirling at ActOne, where he teaches salsa jive.  “When salsa was introduced to England, lots of people found it difficult to move their hips, thus salsa jive was born,” Hazan explains, “It’s easy to learn and you can do it on any song, Bollywood, hip hop or pop.”

Salsa jive, also called modern jive, is probably the simplest, and some would say the most fun, of all forms of dancing.  It is taught in the form of “moves” (a short sequences of steps) which are then linked together to form a flowing dance.

Hazan was invited to the World Salsa Congress in Mexico but unfortunately could not attend due to visa difficulties. This year the World Salsa Congress is being held in Cuba, and will supposedly be five times bigger than previous events. Hazan has been invited again and hopes to attend this year. “It’s not a competition. All the world champions of dance converge at the event and conduct workshops on dance. I will also be performing the rhumba with the Mexican champion, Ms Beatriz Franco and I plan to spend my three days there soaking in all I can from the masters of dance.”

He concludes: “I never knew that one day dancing would take over my life but it did. Dancing helps me relax, it lets me express myself.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 13^th,  2011.