Shravya Manu
“Dancing is like a relief.”
Shravya Manu: “I started dancing when I was really young, maybe when I was two or three years old. It was a Bollywood dance class, and I remember looking forward to going to the classes. From there, I started learning more styles of dance, such as Bharatanatyam. Bharatanatyam is a classical Indian dance that shows stories about Indian mythology. I’ve continued to learn Bharatanatyam, and I think it’s been challenging enough to keep me interested. You have to have strong core muscles and quadriceps to maintain good form, so it can be physically strenuous. Learning new steps is also hard, as well as putting them together to form a dance. I once had to learn and perfect this six-minute dance in less than a week for a competition. It was a lot of pressure, but it was my favorite dance I’ve performed because it pushed us to perform as well as possible. I love the process of learning a new dance and practicing it until I’m ready. I think the key to dancing is to capture the audience, and to make the audience not take their eyes off you. And you have to enjoy dancing as well, or else dancing isn’t going to be fun. In the future, I’d like to reach a certain stage for Bharatanatyam where I feel like a solid dancer, and maybe join a college dance team.”