I was a Professional Dancer in a Bollywood Music Video

Yes, for real. I’m not making this up.

Okay, the title sounds a little more glamorous than the situation was in reality– but this really happened. At the time, I was sort of embarrassed about how awkward and unsynchronized we look in the video (see below), and I refused to show anybody. But alas, the time has come for me to share this story.

This was about five or six years ago, in the small cozy town of Mission, BC, Canada. I was in high school at the time, as were the other dancers at Can Dance Studio. While we (the dancers) were stretching at the beginning of class, our dance teacher told us that someone has contacted the studio looking for dancers to hire for a music video.

They were looking for twenty or thirty dancers for a big group number, according to the phone call. There will be a choreographer and they would teach us the dance piece, they had said. They would provide costumes, makeup, and hairstyling. It was a paid job. They would be filming in a couple weeks, so they wanted to meet and have rehearsal before then.

That sounds cool, a few of us said. Which style of dance is it?

Bollywood.

Bollywood? Our studio didn’t offer Bollywood dance classes. None of us had ever tried this type of dance before. Although Canada has a lot of immigrants, with a particularly prominent Punjabi population in Mission, none of us looked remotely Indian. Apparently that didn’t matter, and they really wanted a huge group of us dancers to be in their music video.

Only a handful of us were interested, and finally only three of us agreed to do it. Well, three is better than nothing. Somehow I became the one responsible for contacting the guy who had called the studio. He told me that he wanted me to come to his house so we could discuss the job.

Ummm. What? Alarm signals went off in my head. To meet at his house? This could very easily have been a scam, but my mom and I decided it was safe to go check it out together. If it got weird, we could just leave.

It turned out to be completely safe, not sketchy or creepy at all. The guy we were meeting turned out to be a local singer producing a low-budget video. And the address he gave us really was his personal home! His kids were running around playing, his wife was cooking in the kitchen, and we sat in the living room to talk. He handed me a DVD and told me to watch it, and that he wanted us to do something like the dance number in the video.

What about the choreographer? I asked. When will they teach us the choreography?

Apparently, there had been some sort of miscommunication, and there would be no choreographer. Suddenly I was the choreographer! (This, alone, should strike you as hilarious. I was completely unqualified for this job.)

Well, how hard can it be? I thought. I had choreographed a tap dance routine for the kids I was teaching at the studio, and I had choreographed routines for myself from time to time.

So, I watched the video a bunch of times, copied some moves, added my own little twist, and put it together in counts of eight. We briefly rehearsed at our empty dance studio on the weekend, hoping someone would help us rehearse and improve our routine before doing it in front of the camera.

The next weekend, that day of filming was one of those days where you have no idea what’s going on, you just kind of go with the flow until you realize how unusual your situation is. I will point out that from this point on in the story, my friends and I were a visible minority in this East Indian “world” of Bollywood that we stepped into (it really felt like another world considering how clueless we were in the traditions, the clothing, and the language).

We started out at a hair salon owned by a friend or relative of the singer. There, we were ushered into the back room and asked to put on colourful flowy suits and matching glittery earrings. The ladies at the salon did our makeup, including putting something between our eyes which might be called a bindi (I’m not really sure, sorry if I’m using the wrong word).

Then we drove off to a very fancy, enormous house in Abbotsford (neighbouring city to Mission). Already on-site were the singer and the beautiful young girl who would be co-starring in his music video. And here we found out a fun fact that is quintessentially Canadian: This actress did not speak a word of Punjabi. Born and raised in Canada, she had been taught to lip sync the words to this song (I don’t even think it was her voice singing on the recording, if I remember correctly).

The cameraman set up the shot and positioned us on a hill in front of the house, in the background of the actress. At this point, our shoes became a problem. We were wearing regular old sneakers, which clashed horribly with our costumes. It was a surprisingly cold day, and the grass was still wet with dew, so we politely refused to dance barefoot. As a clever solution, they asked us to dance in the garden, right behind the shrubs and bushes so that our feet would be hidden.

I am going to point this out before anyone else does– WE WERE NOT GOOD. We kind of sucked. We had barely rehearsed, we were not synchronized, we were not in our element of dance styles, and all in all, it was not our finest dance moment. Mind you, this is not a critique of the music video in itself, as I am not an expert, and am in no position to judge a Bollywood music video. There are some pretty nice shots of Vancouver in the video, and the melody is really catchy.

Before we went home, we somehow almost didn’t get paid– but considering all our choreography initiative, and the time we had taken out of our weekend to partake in this production, my mom insisted that we deserved to earn at least something. So, after some negotiation, we were paid $100– altogether. That makes about $33 for each of us. Maybe it’s not a lot, but by definition, I was a “professional dancer!” I’m practically a movie star!

We sort of lost contact with the singer after that, but somehow, we found the music video posted on YouTube. It apparently aired on the Punjabi TV channels as well. It was a bit of a bewildering experience, but it was definitely a lot of fun. It was a really unique opportunity to not only cross cultures like this, but also experience a day in the entertainment industry. I consider myself lucky to have been a part of this!

So, without further ado, here is the Bollywood music video we have all been waiting for. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

(See if you can spot me. I’ll give you a hint; I’m the one in the green)

The Difference Between my First Year and my Third Year at the Medical University of Gdansk

A lot can change in two years.

A lot can change in six years, as well, and I expect to have grown in many more ways by the end of this degree. But so far I have been here for two years, and things feel different already.

As a preface to the story my journey, I must establish that I live in a bubble. My bubble is known as the “English Division of the Medical University of Gdansk” (ie, the 6-year medical program for international medical students at my university in Poland, where all our classes are taught in English).

In this bubble, you can function freely without the use of Polish. In fact, it is considered to be more advantageous to be able to speak Swedish in this bubble. When you are in the bubble, it is impossible to see outside the bubble. To you, the bubble is the world. The bubble is your whole life. The bubble is smallest in first year, and grows bigger and more transparent as the years go by. The longer you live in the bubble, the more you start to glimpse the outside world and remember its existence. The bubble gradually expands to incorporate more of the outside world over time.

You still live, nonetheless, in the bubble. In this bubble, there are a few simple but crucial rules which you must dedicate your life to: GO TO CLASS. DON’T GET SICK. STUDY. STUDY. STUDY. PASS.

You must go to class because your attendance is mandatory. You can’t get sick because you have to go to class, and even if you are sick you have to go to class (apologize in advance to your seminar group, as they will all get sick too). You have to study so you can pass. You have to pass.

You want to pass because in this bubble, that is the be-all and end-all ultimate goal: to pass your exams, to pass the course. When you are in the bubble, it is clear to see that every exam you take is the most important thing in the universe.

If you have never lived in this bubble, there is no way to truly comprehend what it means to live inside this bubble. I acknowledge that there are other bubbles, there are other environments which are similar in construction to ours. I also acknowledge that there are many other places where your life consists of working hard to attain a difficult goal, where there is a lot of pressure, where you are tried and tested to prove your perseverance. I don’t mean to say that my school and my chosen field of study are some sort of superlative. It is absolutely true that a lot of people work hard, not just medical students in Gdansk.

What I do mean to say is that this bubble is a unique environment in itself, and that like many things in life, you have to experience it to understand it completely. Studying can take over your life here. However, in my opinion, there is a huge difference between being in first year and being in third year.

In first year, the bubble was microscopic and isolating, and all the first-year students were stuck in a positive-feedback loop of stress. We were desperate all the time. Can you blame us? We had heard the horror stories. We had been warned of the near-impossibility of passing anatomy– let alone passing histology and everything else too. The formaldehyde fumes made us high and deranged in the dissection labs. The relentless stress wore our bodies out and we were chronically burnt-out and exhausted. We scared each other, scared ourselves into a constant state of terror. Our mantra was “PASS OR ELSE,” and everyone knows that “or else” is the most dangerous thing in the world. Every moment felt like a test, every minute passing was one minute less to study. Forget cooking, forget sleeping, forget exercise and forget finding time to do the things you love– pick one, maybe two, nope! too late! you were too slow! back to studying! now!

Thankfully, many of us figured out a balance which allowed us to survive that first year in the bubble. The severity of the stress varied between people; some managed to stay chill and retained interests and characteristics that made them more than just a medical student, while others became nothing more than a walking, talking textbook-memorizer.

Then we went home for the summer, took a real break for the first time in nine months, and settled back into the real world. You see the bubble with new eyes when you step outside of it and look back in.

When we returned for our second year, we did so with a determination to “be ourselves” once again. To pursue our interests, re-discover the meaning of hobbies, social life, and balance. In second year, of course, school is still important. School is still demanding and exhausting. However, you know what you can do and what is expected of you– and that makes it manageable. A better balance is re-instated.

And now we are returning to the bubble for the third time. When we stepped back into our now-familiar bubble this year, we realized it had grown. Now our bubble encompasses not only textbooks and classrooms, but also hospitals and Polish patients. Yes! It’s true! Real, live patients! We have dreamed of this day for years! We are starting to learn how to put our theoretical knowledge to practical use! Thank you, thank you, thank you for these exciting new clinical courses! There are a lot of difficult courses this year. There is a lot of new knowledge. There are a lot of textbooks and a lot of skills to practice. There is A LOT of studying ahead of us.

But the difference between my first year and my third year in this bubble is my reaction to it all:

I laugh in the face of stress.

There’s always going to be a lot to do. In fact, there’s too much to do! It’s ridiculous! How are we possibly going to learn all these diseases and drugs and symptoms and treatments to pass all these courses in just nine months?! Even now it’s making me laugh, perhaps out of delirium. But we’ll find a way– we always do. That’s one thing that medical students have in common; we never give up.

We’ll find a way to learn what we need to learn BECAUSE WE LOVE IT. I love it. There is no where else I would rather be, nothing else I would rather be studying.

We still live in a bubble, though, and the same rules still apply. So, what are we going to do this year? We are going to go to class, we’re going to take care of our health, we’ll study study study and then we’ll ace those exams!