Dance nahi kiya toh kya kiya!!

Harsha Maheshwari aka KOMET is an artist, a YogAnce( Yoga + Dance ) enthusiast , life lover and strong believer of energies. She is the director of Happy Hours Dance Place through which she conducts national and international workshops, jams and uplifting programmes for the privileged and underprivileged people of the city with #DanceNahikiyaTohKyaKiya

Her brand Cypher hours has successfully completed 9 editions in Hyderabad where you get to see Rappers, dancers, beat boxers, Dj's graffiti artists, photographers, teachers, performers and all kinds of artsy people and brands on board.

She has been a speaker and performer of TEDx platform 4+ times and has collaborated with well known artists from the country and abroad for various artsy events. She started a movement #HEALnotHate three years back and has been spreading body positivity through it in various educational institutes and shows.

At present they have national faculties, people travelling from other countries and abroad to be a part of this, have judges from every dance form and is a combination of every dance from and people from all walks of life.

Harsha shares, "I started dancing when I was three years old and it has been a beautiful journey since then. I have never seen dance as work. I was always excited to dance and learn dance. I was lucky because my entire family supported me with my journey in dance. I was not very good with studies so i had to make excused to get myself into extracurricularactivities, slowly people started to appreciate my skills and me, then I joined different dance classes and dance school and so far my journey has been very smooth."

#HealnotHate

Heal not hate started when Harsha was 26 years old and that was when she decided,she wanted to do something that makes her get closer to herself. On July 1, her 26th birthday, she decided to shave her head and rid herself of the insecurity she has nurtured for years. Not just that she went on to give up perfume and make up; anything that would pertain to judgement in the society.

She adds, "The whole point of doing heal not hate was that if we keep hating our body and we keep telling ourselves that we're not enough whatever positivity we have left that will also go away and we end up feeling not good enough. Healing which is something that has a helped me kickstart my journey at a very different level, before that i was a dancer a person now I will call myself a mover a healer an artist who knows so much my body I can impact the people around me with this positivity."

Sharing about the movement, Harsha says, "The movement has been beautiful and I enjoyed each and every moment. I feel a with this initiative a lot of school and colleges will be very beneficial so i started going to different NGOs with our team and we spoke to many kids telling them how important it is to love yourself and to be comfortable in whatever you're with. We planned to take this initiative to bigger schools where we will teach kids how to start this journey of self-love and accept more than judgement. Before going bald I asked myself this question that do you love yourself the way you are now and will you love yourself the way you will look without my beautiful hair which I cherished and nourished always, how would that make you feel, so I took that task as a challenge for me, the point of putting that up for people was to encourage them saying no matter what you look always love yourself."

Hyderabad Dance Festival

Hyderabad dance festival is a 9 days exclusive festival to celebrate the spirit of dance. The vision of the festival is to bring multiple dance forms, artists, art curators, thinking minds, stalwarts into one roof and showcase the diversity of dance in the city. Curated by Harsha Maheshwari , Mohit Shridhar and Vaibhav Modi is co-sponsored by HMDA, Is set to happen in 3 prime locations such as State arts gallery, Shilpakala Vedika and Heart Cup cafe gachibowli. The event would foresee dancers and dance enthusiasts participating in workshops, panel discussions, film screening , cypher hours and breathtaking performances.

The event board has highly experienced and diversified personalities such as Bharatanatyam dancer Padma Shri Ananda Shankar Jayant, Contemporary maestro ShreenathMuthyala, kathak legend Pandit Rajendra Ganganiji, Ret. IAS officer Sri B.P.Acharya and Transgender rights activist VyjayantiVasantaMogli who are here to take the festival to a stage of paramount. The idea of the festival is to untag the style, class, gender, sexuality and origin of dance to retag the spirit of dance in itself.

Harsha adds, "The main aim behind this is that we donot have a cultural body in this city, we have theatre and literary festival but we do not have a dance festival. To break all the boundaries that it is just a classical workshop, this is just a hip-hop jam and event. We wanted to include everything. We have different kind of faculties, we have a rap workshop, we have 2 teacher who have been trained in ballet, 2 teachers trained in classical who will be teaching these youngsters visiting the workshops and teach them as dance and not like tag yourself as Bharatanatyam dancer or hip-hop dancer.We want to touch every corner of the city, every dancer and create a body that occurs every year. The pandemic has hit every nook and corner of the world, especially the artist and the freelancing artists. We wanted to supported them and give them a platform."

The festival would impact over 6,50,000 people. The festival aimed to involve different communities and uplift the communities who cannot afford these workshops and festivals.

"We were clear in our head to club them can also learn from internationally. Socially we wanted to support all off them. There are two windows here; one is the paid workshops and the other is the workshops and other things that are walk-in which are free of cost," adds Harsha.

The festival will also be marked by two vital and distinct panel discussions that are aimed to address the narrative behind the faculty and significance of dance. A time-table is below this article for ready reference and workshop registrations can be done on the festival's website - www.hyddancefestival.com.

The Hyderabad Dance Festival was a jam when it was a baby sapling. In its past nine volumes, it has morphed from being a Cypher Hours do in 2016 to including the dance camp 'ceLIBERATE' from 2019 and moving to a multiple dance camp - Indian classical forms included, a gala evening and a cypher hours cum showcase evening in 2021 in its current volume 10. The tribe that got used to this celebration after months, if not weeks, is returning after an unprecedented gap of a year and a half due to the pandemic.