Kunal Om on his Bolly debut O'Romeo and the dance form of flamenco in India
If you have seen Vishal Bhardwaj's O'Romeo, you must have witnessed the beautiful flamenco choreography, and for that the credit goes to dancer Kunal Om, who made his Bollywood debut as a choreographer in the film.
Kunal is among the few artistes in India trained in authentic flamenco, and the conversation focuses on bringing a niche global dance form into mainstream Indian cinema, his creative process, and the journey from stage performance to a feature film. Excerpts:
Flamenco in India is rarely heard about. What made you pursue this dance form?
I have been a performer and dancer since I was in school, of just 14 years, and throughout my school, college and all my youth, I was performing Jazz, Contemporary, and for various artistes at various concerts, in India and Internationally. Growing up, I was much intrigued with Latin music and had the opportunity to perform with Ricky Martin in India. Internationally I have performed with artistes like Bonny M, Shaggy, Diana King on various platforms, here in India. So, an exposure to international music has been there since a very young age, which actually pushed me to pursue but I didn’t know the differences between Spanish and Latin, because I was young and didn’t have much exposure to these dance forms.
I continued performing for almost 15 years more, until I stumbled upon a performance by Late Pandit Chitresh Das who performed a fusion at NCPA and that’s what struck me about Flamenco. As a child, I was a huge fan of tap dancing but we didn’t have any opportunities to learn or perform in India. But when I saw this performance, I took an appointment and met the Flamenco artiste, and he gave me an insight about the art form.
During my research on Flamenco, I travelled to Spain, where I watched a lot of Flamenco and learned that the dance form has very strong gypsy routes. Although it was born in Spain, the gypsy routes came all the way from Sind, Punjab, Rajasthan, and had a lot of influences of African music, Arabic music, Romani gypsies. And pursuing it was like starting my career from scratch. This is my 12th or 13th year of performing it professionally.
Do you also teach? What's the demand like?
I teach. During the lockdown period, I, in fact, taught Flamenco to a lot of Indian-International students, who had challenges of understanding or speaking Spanish. Flamenco is a very powerful and dedicated dance style, and like most Indian classical dance styles or classical instruments, it takes years to learn. Flamenco is a lot about technique and people often find it boring, and even the music is very different. It’s not like other dance forms, it is more like a response to singing, a very one-to-one contact with the guitar, the singer. It is quite a challenge, because we don’t have such singers in India.
Honestly, the trends are very different right now, and there is not much demand. Students are dancing more for social media. They go to the classes, they get their reels and I couldn’t offer that because it takes some good 2-3 years to even stand in a good posture, or create a small little piece and perform it.
How/why do you draw a parallel with Kathak?
The crux of Flamenco is a lot about footwork and rhythm, along with being very expressive. There is a lot of emotional depth in the film. While there is no such similarity between the two dance forms historically, rhythm and footwork too comes with Kathak, making it very engaging. The footwork, jugalbandis of integrated Flamenco and Kathak is more interesting for the audience, especially because there is such a huge audience for Kathak in India. The emotional depth of Rajasthani folk songs made me choreograph Flamenco with that powerful music.
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