JOIN USOn meeting 37-year-old John Anthony for the first time, I discover that he abstains from cigarettes and alcohol, and is extremely shy when on stage. “My friends ask me, ‘You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, what do you do at parties, John?’ to which, I tell them that I’m a good observer. I watch how people dance,” John tells me. He is not too particular or regimental about his diet either. “I just ate a lot of rice and came,” he laughs, as his words belie his sinewy frame.
John is remarkably calm as he sips on a can of Red Bull while talking about how he began working at the age of 15 to support his family, putting himself through evening college and later, establishing himself as a dance instructor. Coming from a humble background, he graduated with an MBA in Travel Management and started his career as a courier delivery boy. Fifteen years ago, being a travel consultant at an agency entailed 16 hours of work a day, and being one of the youngest travel managers in the country (at 22), he even had to work weekends to protect his job.
Stumbling upon dance
To counter the side effects of job rigour, John took to dance, although rather accidentally. “I first started learning dance as a stress buster. I never danced as a child, teenager or in college. One day, I randomly walked into Alliance Francaise in Bengaluru and was taking a peek inside. There was a class going on and the lady there forced me into joining. At first, I didn’t even know what it was. Later, I figured out that it was salsa.”
A few months into this, his employers learned that he was into salsa and wanted him to put up a show at the office. This turned out to be his first step into teaching, where he trained 50 people from his office and put up a show for 5,000 people. “It was after this show that I realised I could also teach, and wanted to do more,” admits John. He started to get serious by watching a lot of salsa videos. It was 2003, and YouTube wasn’t man’s best friend yet. So, he had to order CDs from Puerto Rico (where the salsa world championship was held). His first order took six months to arrive, but it was a beginning nonetheless.
John managed to gather a group of people who were willing to train under him, and within a year, he was teaching 200 individuals spread across eight batches. For the next few years, he put all his students in shows and managed a full-time job as well. During this time, he received no formal training himself. But he would just watch videos and get creative. It was at this point that he realised that one could be a great dancer, but it took different skills to be a teacher.
John began travelling overseas in 2008 for shows, and it was in the following year that he had to take a call on whether he wanted to work and teach or choose between the two. And he made his choice. He opened his own studio in South Bengaluru, where he began teaching salsa, bachata and jive.
I interject here to ask him if that felt like a responsibility. “Of course it did because it comes with sacrifice. But the pleasure and satisfaction that I gain by teaching dance is something else. Leaving my job was risky, but I have a lot of pride in it. We have one life and we have to make it count,” he answers. He named his studio Latino Rhythms Academy. “There were no strategies that went into naming this. It came straight from the heart,” he explains.
Salsa is a dance form that originated in Cuba, bachata came from the Dominican Republic, kizomba from Angola — the three of them are the most popular dance forms at the moment, and John picked them all up while travelling.
But he does have qualms about the approach the masses take towards dance in India. He believes most of them learn not to compete or perform, but for vanity and fun, which makes them less than dedicated. “Bachata, for instance, is actually a soft dance form. People didn’t like it much, so they added R&B music, sensual factors, and urban elements to it, and now it has almost become a rave,” he rues.
In good time
“Ideally speaking, to become a decent salsa dancer, one needs at least two years. On the other hand, bachata requires three months, which is why people prefer it. And with kizomba, it takes just one month to learn it. Kizomba originates from ‘semba’ and was essentially animal movements along with rhythmic drums. It was an African dance that sailors used to do. Then, French music came into it. And now, most people have started learning it for the wrong reasons — they want to get on the floor ASAP,” he adds.
John believes that learners must start from basics and then graduate to dancing. However, that does not seem to happen often. “When I ask people why they want to learn, they have the strangest of reasons — to get on national television, or so that they can spin and dip a girl at a party,” John recounts.
John never rehearses before going to classes. How his body moves is the choreography, he says. Having said that, he has also identified potential and created instructors. He is also careful enough to be aware of himself: “I consider myself a slow learner, but once I get things into my muscle memory, I cannot take it out.”