Moving Through Life On A Full Plate: Riya's Reflections
Riya’s life rarely comes in neat portions.
There is her career as a software developer, dance, rehearsals, performances, travel, marriage, family and the regular business of figuring out how to fit one more thing into an already packed calendar. For the last two and half years, there has also been the movement between cities - spending stretches of time in Bangalore for dance before returning to the city where she lives with her husband. The city where she lives with her husband also changes as his postings change.
She isn't entirely sure how long this full-plated life is sustainable. Yet, she keeps moving.
Riya seems to have an appetite for experiences. She travels to collect them, dances because it makes her happy, and is drawn to people who are passionate enough to make difficult things feel worth doing. If you glance through her personal Instagram, it tells the same story - a Ladakh trip can contain broken trains, rescheduled flights, airport floors, altitude sickness, punctures and fuel anxiety and still be remembered for mountains that looked photoshopped, cold mountain air, the Milky Way, good food and good people.
If anything, Riya seems to enjoy life most when plenty is happening inside it.
A Beginning in Discipline
Dance entered her life in fourth grade, almost casually. A couple of friends were learning Bharatanatyam. Riya watched them perform at their annual day and wanted to try it too. Her teacher lived just 50 metres from home, the fees were affordable, and there was no complicated logistics involved.
What she found there was a demanding teacher: a 73-year-old man who taught in the temple behind her house. She was initially intimidated by him. Years later, she would recognise how much his discipline had shaped her.
“Little did I know that he was actually a really amazing, well-known, well-renowned Bharatnatyam teacher, but I found this out much later. He was very disciplined, very strict and very on the point. I think that's where I get my basics from, and I love that about Bharatanatyam.”
Her sister and friends eventually stopped attending. Riya didn't. “Somehow it suited me,” she says.
She eventually left Bharatanatyam for her board exams. At the time, dance was a hobby - something she loved, but something life could ask her to put down. After college, one of the first things she did was sign up for Kathak.
Kathak gave her something different: softness, grace and beauty. “It was really beautiful, just to look at, just to dance - very feminine, very graceful and nice.I think that about Kathak really kind of helped me stick on to it.”
Work eventually interrupted that too. She reflects: “I want to return to Kathak - but I need to take something off my plate for that to be possible. We will see.”
Then belly dance arrived, almost by chance.
Her cousins had seen a performance and wanted to try it. They took her along to classes in Sahakarnagar. What began as curiosity stayed with her for several years.
COVID brought another interruption. And then came Nrityakosh.
The Moment She Knew
Riya remembers the first time she watched Debapriya perform in Move in 2021. There was a spotlight, she thinks, coming from behind. Debapriya was spinning. For a minute and a half, she simply kept spinning.
“That is when I fell in love with her dancing,” Riya remembers. “And I knew that I want to train under her long-term.”
Riya joined Nrityakosh for an Indian Fusion module in 2021. It was an easy entry point: she already had a grounding in Indian classical movement, and she was fascinated by the possibility of bringing belly dance into an Indian aesthetic.
Then she moved into the Advanced modules and began exploring Oriental belly dance more deeply. Within months of 2022, she was on her way into The Nrityakosh Company.
What struck her about the experience was not only the dancing, but everything around it - the designing, the production, the thought that went into constructing a performance. “The involvement here is much more. I can see how the designing is being done, how the production is being thought through. I can see the thought process more in detail, and it feels like a little more advanced, professional kind of thing.”
It changed the way she thought about taking dance seriously.
Serious, But for Herself
Riya is careful about what “professional” means to her. She doesn't necessarily mean making money from dance. “It is something that I do for myself because work is for the money. This is something I do for myself and something I feel happy about. Professionally is just about me taking it more seriously. That's all how I see taking it professionally.”
That seriousness has meant showing up even when showing up is difficult. It has meant learning online across cities, imagining the entire studio in her head when she cannot physically be there, and spending hours trying to absorb choreography without the energy of the people around her.
Because Riya knows what happens when that energy is present.
“Some days, when it's just me in my house, some days my body does not want to move. I am tired, I am lazy. It's just much harder to do it alone. But in the studio, everyone is around you. So, you kind of pick up from each other's energy.”
Learning to Stay
Joining Nrityakosh after COVID was not easy. She felt different in her body, different about how she looked and different when she danced. Then she entered a room filled with dancers she admired and immediately saw the distance between what they could do and what she could do. “For me, it has always been a confidence issue. After COVID, being cut off from everything, I wasn't dancing for a long time, straightaway entering into Debapriya's advance class was a little... there was a lot of gap in what I knew and what was expected. “
There was imposter syndrome too. She remembers looking at Deba and the other dancers and wondering, is this even possible?
The hardest thing, she says, was staying through that first year. “The feeling of never being able to match what you are looking at and what you are doing has always been a challenge. But I think I take it up as something I can work towards. It does not discourage me but at least it pushes me in the right direction.”
Sometimes, she looks at herself and notices the distance she has already travelled. “Sometimes I'm able to look at myself and say, like, wow, I couldn't do this before and I can do it now. Or there would be something I think would be impossible few classes ago, and then I see that I am doing it few classes later. Now I feel like I have come to a level where I feel like I can manage.”
Learning to See
For Riya, growth isn't only about becoming more technically capable. It is also about becoming a better observer. She watches performances differently. “How I watch, how I understand, what all do I see when I watch a performance, that has changed. And according to me, that is growth.”
Riya still has preferences. Indian Fusion remains closest to her - her favourite pieces to perform have been Haiderium and Akhiyan Udeek Diyan. After that comes Oriental, especially classical Oriental. “I struggle a lot with modern Oriental and things like that. I still think classical Oriental is beautiful and I really like it.”
She enjoys the fact that every genre asks for a different persona. That variety is part of what drew her to belly dance in the first place. “What attracts me to belly dance is almost the showmanship quality in some of the styles of it - being a diva - I would like to be able to do it.”
Her classical training has given her poise and control. Breaking out of that contained quality to create something more flamboyant can be difficult. “I feel my prior training of being poised on stage is very hard for me to break out of to give that kind of energy onstage.”
It is a quality she admires in other dancers, particularly Dinesh. And perhaps, like so much else in her dancing, it is something she will keep working towards.
The Marathon
Her first experience of a long-form show was with Nrityakosh. A long-form show, for her, is a marathon.
When you are performing for 45 minutes, it isn't simply about how much energy you can produce. It is about how much you can sustain. The challenge is to remain present, expressive and alive without spending everything in the opening minutes.
She learned this through experience. Her first major performance season was already difficult: a new job, a full working day, rehearsals and multiple pieces. She performed in everything.
“I know that I didn't even take one dance off my list. I made sure I performed everything.”
Safar-e-Raqs pushed her particularly hard, and then came Papusza. “I remember dying. It was so good.”
However, surviving those productions changed something. Long-form work began to feel possible. By the time In Lieu of Flowers came around in 2024, she could spend less time worrying about surviving the show and more time actually inhabiting it. “Even though In Lieu of Flowers was a long show and it was emotionally heavy -I could actually concentrate on how the dancing felt. Rather than the stress of the entire show. I think that was nice.”
A Mentor Who Made Room
Riya's relationship with Debapriya became even more significant when her life moved away from Bangalore. When she decided to marry her husband and knew she would be moving, she called Debapriya - before she called her work manager.
She wanted to know how dance would continue. Debapriya made room. Riya was allowed to join Company classes online and return during the final month of rehearsals to pick up the work in person.
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