An uncontrollable desire for dance

For dancer and owner of Tarantismo Creative Dance Company, Arati Sunawala, dance has been part of her ever since the beginning. DNA spoke to her about her passion dance.

I’ve been hooked to dance since the beginning. To be precise, my mother told me that I started dancing from the age of three, becoming the youngest contestant in my school. Though I was born here, I grew up in Hong Kong until the age of nine. In fact, I learnt bharatnatyam and jazz from there.

When I came back to India, I joined several classes and learnt different kinds of dance forms. I took my dance lessons from Lourd Vijay’s dance school and started working as an instructor at the age of 17. After school, I joined Mass Communication thinking that television media was my forte.

At that point of time, I was taking dance classes for a group of students and my parents were astonished to see me shuffling between two careers.

Unlike other traditional families, my parents were very supportive and encouraged me to take up dance as my career. I did a course in Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography followed by setting up Tarantismo in the year 2006.

Tarantismo means ‘uncontrollable desire for dance’ and that perfectly describes the passion that I had for dance. I started off by taking classes at home since we didn’t have enough money to hire a studio.

Through my initial dance school contacts, lots of people were willing to work with me as instructors. The growth of my school was slow but steady.  After a year, we staged our first musical version of the film Dil Chaate Hai, which spoke volumes about our dance to the public. Post that we staged several shows — Seven, Traffic, Geometry, all of which went on to become super hits.

I got an opportunity to be a part of Hong Kong Dance Festival and that was the time I got hooked to belly dancing which went on to become my biggest passion. I must say that it is my good fortune and luck that I’ve started my dance school without any initial hiccups.

My journey has been thoroughly enjoyable meeting different kinds of people for lights, stage and publicity. Now, that we have shifted our focus as dance educator teaching movements for kids, we are even more excited about it.

I never came across any major hurdle, at least not as yet. But, it becomes difficult when my show gets cancelled or any of my dancers are injured. 

There tend to be a lot of obstacles, but my passion for dance has made all the obstacles look smaller. You should have that drive that keeps you going no matter what. That will make you successful no matter which field you belong to.