By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Hosted by the Teen Advisory Board, the Walpole Public Library (WPL) held their ongoing program, “Intro to Bollywood Dance,” this past Thursday, September 21st. This program is a continual effort to bring more diversity and culture to the WPL!
Running this class were Teen Advisory Board members, Aditi and Shayna. These two young ladies are the ones who choreograph the dance routines each week for all to learn and enjoy. This class is meant for everyone of all ages and includes detailed instruction in order to master these dances.
In terms of the class as a whole, Aditi mentioned, “Honestly, I wasn’t the one who originally came up with this idea, but I have been dancing for several years. It’s mostly classical dance, but I thought it would be a really cool idea to have something dance related, something to do with Indian culture/tradition, with the Teen Advisory Board as well. Both children and adults can take advantage of that. A lot of the people who come tend to be Indian but I have also gotten a lot of people who are not. So, overall it's been a great program and getting to just have fun with everyone. This is our first time hosting this class during the school year but we have done multiple classes over the summer and they all went over really well.”
Even if you have never danced a day in your life, it is free programs like these that are an amazing stepping stone into trying something new out. It can be said with ease that the members of the Teen Advisory Board truly love putting these types of events on and getting closer with their community.
Children’s Program Coordinator for the WPL, Nikki Cataloni, additionally stated, “These Bollywood Dancing classes that they did over the summer were very well attended, especially for summer programming. There were like fifteen people in the class and it was always very consistent. They were running the classes weekly and the Teen Advisory Board always loves to get involved. I always ask them if there is any programming that they would like to share with the community and the girls had wanted to do this class and it has just truly been very well received from the community. Because of this, we are now continuing it into the school year and kind of playing around with timing.”
If all goes well, this Bollywood Dancing class will continue throughout the year. For more information, please visit the WPL’s website at www.walpolelibrary.org.
