Feeling accomplished for the day's routine. Finally.

First things first. I just realized that I use the word "feel" a lot more than "think". I guess it has something to do with my INFJ characteristic taken from the Myers Brigg test. So I have stuck a chart on my wall behind my bed which has a time table where I have written that I'm supposed to sleep by 10.00pm and get up everyday at 6.00am. Dance classes in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the rest of the days get up and practice my full flip and aramandi.

In terms of health, to eat one spoon of flaxseed daily, drink 10 bottles of water, 2 cups of green tea.

I made that chart and conveniently ran off to Bandipur. All routine to dogs. I did what we call the EXACT opposite of following the routine. But then, I also got back and got to shape.

And when I say shape, I mean started shedding all the extra fat from my thigh accumulated from the overeating at Bandipur.

So today, for the first time in a long long time, I ate dinner by 8.30. Went for my dance class in the morning, practiced aramandi for sometime. For the people who dont know what aramandi is, in Bharatnatyam the half sitting position with your hands on your waist and legs bent so as to form a V is called Aramandi. That is the basic step of Bharatnatyam. Something like Sa Re Ga Ma of Music. But its definitely tougher than that. The pure shivering of your thighs, the bending forward of the upper body , the excruciating pain you feel directly in your thigh muscles, which screams and says you can do no more.

But thats the catch. Once you go past that excruciating pain, the dance is as beautiful as the effort put to get your aramandi right.

So as happy as I am right now in accomplishing the day's routine, I just realized its already 10.45pm and I'm past bedtime. Damn.

Oh last thing, I got wet in the rain today. It felt so amazing looking at everyone hunting for a shelter and I was walking in the rain and listening to music. Plus, luckily I saw this boiled corn guy so took a cup of hot,steaming corn and started walking in the rain again. Long time since I did that. I know it might not seem like a big thing, but it felt so perfectly liberating. Like I broke all the norms and shackles of right and wrong and decided to go the rebel way.

Time to pack up.

Goodnight readers.

Best time to blog

My dinner is getting ready. The rice has got cooked and the dal palak has been put on the wok. I dont know how long will it take to cook. So I have mainly been travelling since the last time I blogged. A few of us went to this place called Bandipur National Park , 5-6 hours from Bangalore. 2 days 1 night. It was an amazing trip. Which also resulted in me sleeping the whole of Monday. Somehow I didn't want to lose track of blogging, so decided to write something.

Also, one thing I discovered today. When you don't practice for five continuous days, and then suddenly go to your dance class.. Forget expecting appreciation for your dance, it will be commendable if you can finish an entire bharatanatyam item at one shot perfectly without panting.

Fingers 'n' Feet

The summer workshop poster is out. Will blog about daily updates later.

Its finally here. The promo video .

My dance workshop got over. And it went really well for my debut. Hardly any profit in the first event, but at least I covered the cost incurred to the conduct the event.

Right from the choreography, the thought behind which dance step to keep which will be easy by a non dancer, and at the same time ensuring every step could be broken down into segments so that it is understandable.

It was my first experience. So I can still see amateur quality in the choreography, the video too.

No regrets at all. Because however be it, I'm going to continue making more videos. And now, my videos will focus on performance rather than events. For the time being at least.

Plus the promo video gave me quite a tough time because it had been long since I had worked on Movie Maker. Nevertheless. I'm proud of it. Here is my first promo video .

Things left to do now are

1)make a visiting card

2)make a website.

But anyway, glad I stayed up and finished this video.

I finally made a start. :)

Do give me suggestions on how to improve the videos and video making style.

Day 8 : It is very easy to sleep when you have work

And easy to blog too. Just like how it happens for all of us during exams, where we are at our creative best, our health best and suddenly we are worried about our skin and health and the things we want to do that we love most. And somehow, we end up forgetting all about it immediately after our exams are over.

Same is the case with me right now. I need to rush outside for promotion and I'm so conveniently learning CSS and editing an image on photoshop to put as my header. After a tough battle with myself, I got myself to get up, leave those things half way done, ate food and started getting ready.

Now, its raining outside. A sudden respite from the terrible heat Bangalore is getting. Not that I should complain much because I have lived in cities like Ahmedabad, Bhopal,Mumbai and Hyderabad where the heat doesn't seem to detach from the cities. Looking at the weather now, I am getting the tendency to slack off again and go to sleep.

But if I do this today, my workshop will be unsuccessful tomorrow. Lets do this today. Lets finish all the jobs and get some good sleep after the workshop.

The fight starts today.

Will I be successful in getting enough people to my workshop?

Day 6 : Never forget hidden costs

One important advice. When you plan something, DO NOT forget overhead costs.

Also, never ASSUME you'll get something at concession.

Rookie Mistake for the first event I am organizing.

My challenges now are

a) Get at least 15 people for the workshop just for break even.

And no, I'm not thinking of charging more or getting profit, because I just want to see whether this concept works.

So, my plans of conducting this event for two days got pretty much ruined. Finance wise things didn't seem to fit. So I had to push the event to one day for 3 hours straight. I don't know how it will go, and lets hope I break even.

Here is my poster for this event.

Fingers crossed. :):):)

Lets hope I can get a breakeven.

Day 1 : What I learnt . Marketing Strategies

Day 1 My pseudo stint as an event manager. Well, not entirely an event "manager", but more like a sponsorship getter, if thats even a word.

I made a list of all the possible questions regarding details of the event, got it clarified, prepared a budget break up and what we can offer to the sponsors, got ready and headed off to one of the busiest streets in town.

Brigade Road, Bangalore.

I went to around 20 showrooms/franchise/ shops which included places from banks, handicraft items, antique piece showrooms, watch showrooms, hotels, photo studio, gold loans, and I did not even spare government registered emporiums.

To my surprise, I got really good response from a lot of people. The bigger brands just ended up giving me their card with their manager's e-mail address asking me to send them my proposal.

But some shops where I went were totally interested and were really friendly. I never got even a single person signalling me to get out or stop disturbing him or anything.

It was like a nice cushion for the fact that I had just collected the material, and without an agenda or a particular shop to go to, my randomness looked quite positive.

Another thing that I understood in this field is : You'll meet different kinds of people, some may be truly business minded and will ask you " Isme hamara faayda bataao", or people who expect smooth talking like "Considering your product will attract art lovers the most" etc. Also, always remember that if you are girl, you'l also have to deal with over-friendly shopkeepers , if you know what I mean. Essentially, don't take anything to heart, and if you get compliments , there is no need to get offended... Just take it :)

Somehow I didn't even mind those over-friendly shopkeepers, they seemed completely harmless.. and in fact they were really nice people.

I got back, with 20 visiting cards, lets see how "The Proposal" goes. But happy to have a good start at least.

Can get some peaceful sleep tonight. Except if I get dance dreams again.

Early morning, time to get up and get going

I got up a little early today. Even in spite of not having my dance class today morning.

So I have a few things to do for my agenda today. Today's main agenda is getting sponsorship for this programme of my dance class . There is an event happening in July for which I need sponsorship worth 2L. Ive done some small level sponsorship in my college where I did not get too much either. Infact I hardly got anything out it. Thats why I thought I venture in for a few days and see how successful I can be at getting sponsorship.

Secondly, I have my regular dance class today evening. Before that, I need to finish my regular stretching, the aim for being able to do a full split . Shockingly, yesterday after I got done with my stretches and cooled down, and when I sat for dinner, I saw a few scars on my knee, the ones you get when someone punches you or you hit some object very hard. Like a blood clot. It was pretty scary and the spookily the first thing I remembered was the movie "Black Swan". And ouch, the scar hurts a little. But as most experienced dancers say, if you can live with the pain like nothing happened and continue dancing, the pain will go. I am not a firm believer of that in many cases. I believe it works when you have an internal ailment, like fever or cold. But if your bones are damaged, let them rest for sometime before messing with it.

Ironically, the same person who is saying this ended up practicing for 6 hours straight before the dance auditions with a damaged ankle and succeeded in reducing the pain. I just dont understand how the human anatomy works.

Anyway, these days I have got totally obsessed with dance. I dont remember a single night after coming back from the auditions where I haven't dreamt of being auditioned . And surprisingly, everytime I seem to be getting selected in every dream. Seriously weird as I thought I got over the whole auditions thing, got back to Bangalore and started planning of what to do next.

By the way, I am planning to conduct my first ever dance workshop in my apartment itself. I plan to schedule it next week. I need to get a flyer ready so that I can stick it all around my Apartment complex. I am still finalising on he dance style and which audience to target.

Fingers crossed.

Aim for the next one month

a) Learn to do a full split

b)Learn to do a cartwheel

c)Post both on youtube and be be proud of yourself :)

Now that was my first reality show stint

I had been vanishing from blogging for the past one month. Not that I was completely busy, but I chose to keep shut about the experiments I had been doing with my life.

Now that the experimenting is over , at least the one I was in, I decided to talk about it.

So here is the entire story of my first reality show stint.

I had gone home for a couple of days after quitting my job, and my mom saw me dancing at home. She asked . "Why don't you take part in some dance competition?" It sounded like a good idea to me, considering I wasn't doing anything apart from enjoying being unemployed anyway. After looking up on the net, we saw this dance competition called Just Dance that was a TV based dance competition going to be hosted and aired on Star Plus. The Bhopal auditions were going to be held on the 4th March, 2011. I was anyway planning on going to Bhopal to attend the Tech Fest of my college. Anyway, I decided to just go and give it a shot. I had zero preparations on me. I hadn't in fact even started attending my dance classes then.

This is the first time I understood how things work in a reality show, how to face the camera, how and what is looked for from you in a reality show.

Day 1 , 4th March ,2011 : I landed at the Venue, State Museum of Bhopal where the auditions were supposed to be taking place. I didn't have my song edited nor the choreography done. I got done with that somehow. After waiting for seven hours in the scorching heat and realizing that no one else had come to the auditions just wearing a pair of jeans and a black top, I surrendered even before entering the auditions and knew I can't get through. But I went and gave the auditions .. And somehow I scraped to the second round called the TV round. This round was essentially a recording of your dance that they would send to Mumbai to be judged and will come back to you if they like your dance.

22nd March, 2011 : Got the call for the next round of selection .

29th March, 2011 : Reached Kolkata. First round here was called the TV round part 2. Got through that. Second round was the Producers round. I had prepared a contemporary dance on "Kahin To" from the movie Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na. The producers told me my strengths lies in Semi Classical and that I should not attempt dancing on Contemporary if I haven't been trained in it. I clear the producers round somehow. They tell me to dance on a semi classical number. I go roaming in Kolkata at 10 in the night hunting for a semi classical/bharatanatayam dress. Found something somehow, got back and slept off with my makeup on. Did not even choreograph for the song.

30th March, 2011 : I get up at 6 in the morning with a start realizing that I haven't decided the song yet. I make my decision to repeat some song Ive done before and square in on "Iktara" from the movie Wake up Sid. I just put a few Bharatanatayam steps in between so that it starts looking like a semi classical number. I get ready, edit the song and reach the venue at 8. My aim was to choreograph the song in the mind while I was waiting for the judges to arrive. The judges by the way were Farah Khan and Vaibhavi Merchant. And ya, this show is called Just Dance, if I forgot to mention it earlier. Anyway, I choreographed something while everyone was waiting in the line . These people were the 80 finalists selected from the east region which included Hyderabad, some people from Bhopal and a lot of people who had come from the Kolkata first round of auditions itself. Anyway, this round was quite a screw up for me , Ill tell you why.

I had anyway already surrendered for this round because all the people I met there had previous experience in other TV reality shows. And I even watched their dance, they were too much better than me anyway. More experienced, more trained. It was going to be an impossible task just getting out in a dignified way, I just didn't want to end up making a fool of myself.

The moment came for me to enter the stage. I went there and was pretty cool in spite of seeing Farah Khan and Vaibhavi Merchant being there to judge me.

I did my first semi classical performance after which Vaibhavi Merchant said she thought I had something in me. Then she asked me whether I knew some other styles, and then asked me to dance on Sheila. Now because I had just finished dancing on a semi classical, my body was still in that semi classical stage and I ended up dancing on Sheila just like another Semi classical performance to which Farah Khan told me that I might have been one of the best dancers in my region but right now I was not even close for this competition. I smiled and agreed, because I myself knew how much I had to learn . I took that in the right spirit and left with a wonderful experience and a hope that I will become a better dancer, learn more.

And back I am to Bangalore, my first stint in a reality show.