RITAMBHARA SAHNI TESTIMONIAL

Always love the love I receive from my students. It’s the same feel when you love your own child and they love you back. It’s priceless. The most positive and peaceful thing for me is teaching my students and its energizes me with positivity .Love you all my students and I thank each and every student of mine to give me the opportunity to teach them.

--- RITAMBHARA SAHNI

Roksana and I share an extremely special bond. She is an amazing person and great at belly dancing. I want us to eventually be a part of the team at my belly dance Institute. Love you so much Roksana. Want to always always treasure you as friend and team mate.

ROKSANA – TESTIMONIAL

Ritambhara Sahni’s Belly Dance Institute Mumbai has been a magical journey and will continue to be more magical. I am writing this to Ritambhara Sahni today because I want her to know my magical journey with her. Ritambhara Sahni, my belly dance teacher who has always encouraged me and made me progress and progress I need her to know my journey with belly dance and her and Belly Dance Institute Mumbai by Ritambhara Sahni. So here goes my magical journey …..

My first glimpse of belly dancers was in a wedding in the Middle East. And who cannot fall in love with belly dance! Along with my cousins we would grab a scarf, wrap it around our waist and belly dance to the tunes of Nancy Ajram and Yara. The variations in the dance throughout the region maybe slight but in any social gathering, it is absolutely the done thing to do, to simply get up and belly dance with family and friends, quite contrary to the misconception of belly dancing primarily being a dance to titillate men! Well, I grew up seeing a lot of belly dance on television and though we would try to belly dance like the Arabians, we would eventually switch to dancing our simpler Iranian moves. And the more I saw them dance with a sensuous confidence; I withdrew my hopes for ever being able to dance with such grace and flexibility. Despite it all, my fascination for the dance has remained and I would take very opportunity to see a performance, wistfully wishing I could dance like that someday.

Well, so I thought until Ritambhara Sahni’s belly dance institute Mumbai made that little girl’s wistful wish come true. After getting married, I decided on flexing my muscles and hitting the gym was out of the question because I knew I would not be committed for too long. After pondering over aerobics and several other dance forms, I knew within that belly dance would be it. I hoped I could find one in Bombay and decided I would try it out for a month or two and if it was as impossibly difficult as it seemed I would go for the more doable aerobics and zumba classes. I put my thought out to my parents who were absolutely delighted to hear I finally proposed to take up belly dancing. My delighted mum tried to immediately convince me to not drop out of the classes knowing my dancing incapacities and I brushed it aside saying that I was just going to try, knowing as well as my mum did that I had two left feet. My sweet husband, who was my best friend for the longest time before we tied the knot, had seen me jiggle in a belly dancing effort and was as excited as I was about me learning to jiggle the right way, that is to shimmy all the way.

I tried contacting several places after a detailed research online and found Ritambhara Sahni to be the most knowledgeable about the dance, as she went on to elucidate the process of finding the right belt as per the body structure and not as per the design. That’s when I instinctively knew where I had to sign up for my beginner’s course right away. The only step I quickly picked up was the shimmy on that first day because of my earlier efforts but unlike many I took a while picking up the other techniques. It was demoralizing at first to be the last to pick a technique and if it was another institute I wouldn’t have paid heed to my mother’s words and would have left after the second or third day. But with Ritambhara Sahni it was different. She’s not just a naturally beautiful danseuse but the nicest instructor. To her teaching comes easy. Effortlessly she slowly made me pick the techniques and will never make anybody feel anything is impossible. Apart from being encouraging she immediately comes across as a genuinely happy person and is this bubble of energy that exudes positive energy. After working 50-60 hours a week in my profession, Ritambharas belly dance institute Mumbai was my haven. I initially joined to merely flex my muscles but I have received a lot more than I could ask and hope for. I had not only learnt to belly dance but I was fortunate to befriend wonderful people and be in a place that was bursting with laughter and happiness. Light hearted conversations during the dance breaks to passionate discussions on belly dancing would continue as we stepped out into the passage outside the class for a sip of coffee from the vending machine.

The 1,2,3 beginners class quickly went by and soon I had joined the next 4,5,6 level which was quite expected. Unlike other places where different techniques are crashed into one workshop Ritambhara Sahni holds her classes very different. In levels and stages she makes you better in the art of belly dancing but the advance is not made without getting the foundations right. She has the artful knack of articulating the most visually complex techniques in funny ways that are so exact you will always remember them. Ritambhara can mesmerize you when she belly dances but the fantastic teacher in her will tell you that you could also do what you just saw and she will effortlessly teach you how. A year after stepping into the realm of belly dancing, I have emerged more confident and at ease with my body. When I say in self-confidence and ease I am not narrowing my implication to a toned stomach as much as the noticeable poise in the body posture and the innate joy a dance such as this can emanate. Belly dancing, in the guise of a great exercise is the homogeneous balance of graceful movements and precision in techniques which you master in due course of time with a lot of practice.

With no prior dance background but armed with the deep desire to learn, now here I find myself a year later, swaying confidently to the music without being awfully conscious. I did not discontinue before I really began a whole year ago because Ritambhara Sahni gave that spirited confidence and was simply a fantastic teacher. My love for the dance has grown a thousand fold as my respect has for Ritambhara Sahni, making me step with a progressive foot forward to the next levels of the dance. I am absolutely certain that no matter how far I go in my career, I will always be a part of Ritambhara Sahni’s Belly dance institute Mumbai of belly dancing under the mentorship of Ritambhara Sahni for the years to come and long after I successfully complete all the stages Belly Dance Institute Mumbai by Ritambhara Sahni has to offer.