Day before yesterday, all the efforts put into the Culturama production came to an end when we put up our show to a grand audience of 800 parents, students and teachers. This passage of time has allowed me to burgeon as a leader and communicate more coherently.

My main aim over the preparatory stage was to convert amateur dancers into competent classical Indian dancers. It was a taxing job because it has taken me nearly decade to develop my classical dancing skills. In the beginning I already had some experience of teaching dance, but I knew that I was a bit lenient sometimes and let mistakes slide. Over the past few weeks, I ensured that I was firm in my ideas, and repeatedly motivated and encouraged my dancers to execute the choreography to the best of their ability. I also wanted to improve on the way that I led them to a successful show. I feel that I learnt a lot about influencing my dancers from my partner Yukta. She was very good at expressing to the cohort that at the end of the day the show is all of ours, and it is up to us to make it the best we can. Even before the final show, Yukta was better able to convey a ‘motivational speech’ than I was.

I think that my biggest take away from this experience was how I need to change my leadership mechanisms for different people. Everyone learns in a different way, so I had to modify the way in which I taught them. Some of my dancers learnt better from direct orders, while I needed to joke around with some so we developed a better bond before I could be their dance leader.

Next week I will be starting rehearsals for Kahaani, another dance showcase. I will be playing the same role I did for Culturama, so my objective is to get through to my dancers as soon as possible so that they can learn the dance quickly and have more time to master it.