A doctor explains his passion for Bollywood dance – UCLA Health Connect

As Kiran Kavipurapu, DO, steps onto a stage, he’s overcome with anticipation that’s combined, in equal components, with anxiousness and pleasure. However as soon as he locks eyes along with his viewers, the music begins and he begins to twist his arms and arms and twirl his physique to the rhythms of an Indian beat, all of that’s stilled.  

“I really feel one with the music and love expressing myself in distinctive methods,” he says.  

“Bollywood” dancing — a stylistic mash-up that blends conventional Indian folks, hip-hop, Arabic and jazz influences — has been Dr. Kavipurapu’s ardour since he was a baby. Rising up in a household that embraced arts and tradition, he started when he was 6 years previous.  

His mom, a TV and radio artist earlier than immigrating to the USA from India, acquired him began. She choreographed his dances, enrolled him in formal coaching and signed him as much as carry out at neighborhood cultural occasions. Dr. Kavipurapu, who right now is assistant scientific professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the OB/GYN residency program within the David Geffen College of Drugs at UCLA, has been hooked ever since. 

Whereas an undergrad, he was a member of a aggressive dance crew. It was a dedication that had him working towards after courses, generally till 4 within the morning in the course of the top of the competitors season. Even whereas juggling all of the calls for on him — he was a premed pupil and in addition working towards a grasp’s diploma in public well being — dance apply by no means felt like a chore. If something, “it was a launch for me,” he says. “I by no means checked out it as a job.” 

It did, the truth is, develop into a job as he neared the top of his undergrad research and ready to enter medical college. He was employed into an expert troupe that carried out at a wide range of occasions, and was even introduced in to seek the advice of and carry out in a music video — replete with ornate saris and costumes, opulent jewellery and the complicated hand gestures and dance strikes that make Bollywood dancing a visually placing efficiency — by American-Venezuelan singer Devendra Banhart. 

The Bollywood fashion is a function of India’s Hindi movie trade. The phrase itself is a portmanteau of Bombay (right now known as Mumbai) and Hollywood. The related dance tells tales, whether or not they’re drama or a light-hearted romp, by means of music and motion, and has dream-like qualities, typically shifting on the display screen from one location to the subsequent — say, from a sand dune to a snow-topped peak — straight away. “Bollywood dance tends to embrace that dream, asking what might we do if we unfold our creativeness past the confines of the conventional life that we reside in and its day-to-day struggles?” Dr. Kavipurapu says. 

Throughout his aggressive {and professional} dancing days, Dr. Kavipurapu was capable of unfold his personal creativeness as a choreographer. He preferred to include various kinds of dances — Afro, Bollywood and jazz — into one distinctive piece, and he thrilled to the artistic technique of tweaking the choreography till it had achieved his grand imaginative and prescient. He additionally loved watching because the dancers moved from skepticism about his choreographic concepts to embracing them. “It’s rewarding to see your manufacturing on stage and the ‘wow!’ feeling that comes with it,” he says. 

That feeling, Dr. Kavipurapu says, is obtainable to everybody. One doesn’t should be an expert dancer to expertise the enjoyment and calm that comes with shifting your physique and listening to music. He sees that’s true in his personal sufferers. Whether or not going into labor or making ready for an anxiety-provoking process, his sufferers typically use music as a device to destress and get within the zone. 

Dr. Kavipurapu additionally encourages his sufferers to take up dancing throughout their being pregnant. It helps to organize them for labor, he says, and the flexibleness facilitates their child shifting into the correct pelvic place for a pure delivery. “There’s the stigma in ladies’s well being that tells them when they’re pregnant, they need to take it simple. I take the other strategy and inform them to hearken to music and work out,” Dr. Kavipurapu says. Sooner or later, he wish to create a Bollywood dance class to assist his sufferers have interaction in a health routine whereas pregnant. 

Whereas his time to pursue Bollywood dancing considerably diminished as soon as he began scientific rotations in his third 12 months of medical college — whereas concurrently attending regulation college and incomes a JD — Dr. Kavipurapu, to this present day, nonetheless carves out time to carry out at cultural occasions for Indian holidays like Diwali or Holi. He and his household are concerned within the Telegu Affiliation of Southern California, a corporation that celebrates Telegu heritage and hosts an annual cultural occasion. 

Sooner or later, he hopes to return to working towards and performing Bollywood dance regularly. “I’ll by no means let go of it,” Dr. Kavipurapu says. “It’s a large a part of me.”  

Kelsie Sandoval is a senior media relations officer for UCLA Well being. Earlier than coming to UCLA, she was a member of the health-reporting groups for NBC Information and the web information web site Insider