In the groove 

BENGALURU: Hogwarts may not be real but this city-based dance troupe is creating magic with its  choreography. Meet the dancers of Aayana Dance Company, who recently released a video of them using Bharatanatyam to introduce the fictional school’s four leading houses – Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. The group also came up with another dance video for the song Uff Teri Ada from the movie Karthik Calling Karthik, which stars Deepika Padukone and Farhan Akhtar.

The first video saw over 1,80,000 likes on Instagram and the second one has over 80,000 likes. Never expecting any of the videos to go viral, Krishna Manognya Balaraju, artistic director of the company, says the group was just trying to explore the reel feature on Instagram. “A month ago we were trying to figure out this feature.

Then we came across this Harry Potter music and since we are Potterheads ourselves, we had to come up with something,” says Balaraju, adding that it took one hour to decide the choreography and costume. “We planned it at 9pm, started shooting at 10pm and got done by 7 am the next day,” adds Balaraju. Interestingly, the first part of the video was actually shot at the end,  when it was already morning, while the rest of the video was shot at night.

Based on the basic characteristics of the house, they decided Gryffindor would feature red costumes with loud and bold movements, Slytherin has serpentine movements, Hufflepuff had yellow cotton sarees and simple temple jewellery for the costume, and Ravenclaw shows them doing spiral movements to represent the wings of a raven. Their second video, on the other hand, was shot outdoors instead of a studio. This one shows them exploring various contemporary movements. 

Balaraju says the secret behind the video is the joy on their faces, thanks to stepping out of home after the lockdown. “We shot it during Deepavali and dressed up to step out after so long,” says the 28-year-old. Apart from many costume changes, the video is also about free-flowing transitions. “That was the tough part because we usually do our edits ourselves. Since we are dancers and know our beats well, we keep at it till we get it right,” says Balaraju.

The group is currently working on a dance project, which will be showcased in January in Bengaluru, Kochi, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and other cities. Apart from Balaraju, the other key members are Pallavi Manjunath, Vhishal Swamy, Raksha Ganesh and Manish Kumar. The company’s first movie choreography project is also going to be released in January. They have also done various projects with actors like Madhuri Dixit, Anushka Sharma and Salman Khan.