Indian Dance and Music Schools define Indian culture in Detroit, Michigan

Traditional Indian dance schools appeared in America during the early seventies. Talented dancers like Sudha Chandrasekhar, Chaula Thacker, Raksha Dave moved to Detroit to start their own schools.

Bollywood dancing is still a craze in Michigan. Whether it is actresses Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, Aishwarya Rai, Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor or the actors like Prabhu Deva, Shahid Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Ranbir kapoor, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and more. Indian classical and folk dance are equally in vogue. During the last decade metro Detroit has become the hub to several dance schools teaching bharatanatyam, kuchipudi, odissi, kathak and other forms of Indian folk dances like bhangra. Currently, there are over 30 dance schools throughout Michigan. A number of music schools have cropped up – many budding singers want to be trained like sonu nigam, chitra, shreya ghoshal, Kishore kumar, Shankar Mahadevan and the like. Music schools train teens and youngsters in all musical instruments like drums, guitar, violin, flute, sitar, veena etc. and also offer voice modulations and voice classes. Flute and violin lessons are commonly offered. Hindustani and Carnatic singing lessons are offered as well.

All of them want to be a Tamannah, Kajal Agarwal, nayantara, Trisha, Anushka Shetty, Shilpa Shetty or Anushka Sharma. Some boys want to dance like surya, simbu, vijay, jr. NTR, Mahesh Babu, allu Arjun, prabhas or Ram Charan Tej.

What is Bollywood music and dance? Indian movies have done a good job of promoting various dance moves in sync with contemporary music numbers. While Bollywood represents Hindi entertainment, Kollywood is Tamil movies and Tollywood is Telugu movies. Concert tours by musicians like A.R. Rahman, Bappi Lahiri, Shahrukh Khan etc. have popularized the music and dance even among non-Indians. Lots of concerts by Anoop Jalota, Pankaj Udhas, Hariharan, Ghulam Ali, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, K.J. Yesudas and others have also spearheaded the community in thinking about Indian music as a profession.



Talent contests are held every year in cities like Farmington Hills and Troy to pick winners. Sa re ga ma pa winners often visit United States and Michigan is a definite choice because of singing and dancing talent. Miindia.com lists approximately 100 music and dance related events every year. Organizations like Nadanta attract audiences from Ohio and Illinois for their dance performances every year. Popular Indian radio programs in Detroit broadcast latest Bollywood hits every week. Rockin’ Raaga an Indian music and chat radio show is the only radio program in the United States that broadcasts music and dance numbers from various hit movies in various languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi and Marathi.