Ballerinas, kick-boxers, jivers and folk dancers break a leg at ActOne’s studio launch

In just five years, the dance studio has grown from 20 to over 4,000 students.

KARACHI:

Twenty ballerinas in baby-pink tutus opened the show as ActOne, a ‘fun-focused school for arts and wellness’ launched its new studio on Khayaban-e-Shahbaz on Saturday night.

The ‘humble studio’ started teaching 20 students five years ago and has boomed into an organisation with over 4,000 students in classes for hip-hop, zumba, ballet, ballroom, regional, classical, aerobics, yoga and kick-boxing.

The seven-year-old ballerinas were scattered across the front row after their performance. “Yay Aunty Betty!” they squealed in unison, clapping as the graceful dancer, Beatriz Franco or Betty, took a breath after stomping across the wooden floor to the strumming of an acoustic guitar.

Betty is one of the 17 instructors at ActOne and has been trained in folk dance styles, including the salsa, rumba and cha cha cha. She was called especially from South America to instruct at ActOne.

“The new studio symbolises our growth,” said one of ActOne’s founding members, Hazan D.

The routine that followed Betty’s had the audience in fits. Two-masked men in lavender jackets took the stage to perform a hip-hop number to Justin Bieber’s hit song, ‘Baby’. The youngsters in the audience sang along as the two dancers had a brief dance-off. One did the worm and the other responded by walking on his hands. They came together when one of the masked figures was rotated on the other’s head as the audience broke in applause in amazement.

Three-year-old children accompanied the 25-year-olds and the studio was crammed with people on the floor, in chairs, moving around just to get a glimpse of the energetic performances.

The line-up included Hamza Amir, who sang Kailash Kher’s ‘Teri Deewani’ and Aerosmith’s ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’, with his guitar in hand. Nearly 20 seconds later, Asma Ansari and Hazan fluttered on stage to perform a salsa jive and waltz to the two songs.

Shezzi Khan, who is a hip-hop instructor and folk-dancer, took the stage to perform a folkdance on a ‘thal’ or shiny silver platter. The performance was judged by most of the audience members and Hazan as the best of the night.

Hazan was regarded as the ‘backbone’ of the studio by students and instructors. A banker by profession, Hazan said he started dancing at the age of 23 when he enrolled in classes on a trip to Istanbul. “I wanted to provide a platform for everyone, especially youngsters, irrespective of their background or class. Defence was a great place to start off but our studio is for the masses and not just for the elite,” he explained. According to Hazan, dancers lose everything when they are dancing and they are just left with their talent so it doesn’t matter where you come from or what language you speak.

He introduced the audience to two students who had come all the way from Lahore to join ActOne. “They are examples of what ActOne wants to do. When they arrived in Karachi, they did not even know how to speak English but we welcomed them as students and now they will start teaching,” he announced.

Fun is the first of the four basic principles at ActOne. The teachers encourage their students to let loose.

Twenty-eight-year-old Zahra Khan, a student at ActOne, agreed to add that the teachers treat you like friends rather than students. “It is a very relaxed atmosphere. It’s not an institute but more like a family,” she told The Express Tribune.

For seven-year-old Nooria Poonawala, a ballet student, the performance was just as fun as the classes. “We are having a great time but I really wish we could eat that cake,” she smiled, pointing at a chocolate cake, which was brought to celebrate Amir’s birthday. The crowd sang Happy Birthday.

Two years after she moved to Karachi from Australia in 2007, Joshinder Chaggar joined ActOne in January 2009 as a Bollywood instructor. She said she was extremely proud of ActOne and excited to be at the launch. “From their humble beginnings to becoming a force to be reckoned with, this has been achieved only with an incredible amount of hard work and belief in their mission. So to witness the launch, and see it becoming a reality, and everyone who came to support and take part, it was quite unreal,” she added.

Joshinder stood tall in her hot-pink shiny parachute pants as she referred to ActOne’s performers as “great ambassadors of peace for Pakistan.”

“Amidst all the Obama and Osama I think Pakistan needs to be promoted and the real Pakistanis should be represented in the media and we are trying to do just that,” agreed Hazan.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2011.