By Rajani Bansal’s own admission, she’s “not into any sports or physical activity.” But there she is, performing dramatic, colorful, traditional Indian dance onstage. Twice a year, she and her fellow Mona Khan Company students perform for a wide audience, along with smaller performances throughout the year. As someone who does not consider herself a creative person, Bansal is nevertheless at home amidst the sweeping colors and energetic music, over and over again. So how did she get here?
“If I feel dedicated to something,” she says, “I’m 110% in. I ask, ‘how can I get better at this?’”
The dance bug first bit at her sister’s traditional Hindu wedding, in which the sister of the bride is responsible for coordinating the many dances throughout the ceremony in addition to performing a few herself. “In that process,” she says, “that idea got set in my head: ‘oh, this is something that’s cool; something I’m interested in.’”
After moving around the country for other jobs in southern California, Kansas and Arkansas, Bansal arrived in Livermore for her new job at LLNL and was hoping to make new friends. Then COVID-19 arrived. A couple of challenging years passed, until one night her mother called, having come across a dance lesson signup sheet at her local grocery store.
“I was bored, I had nothing to do, I didn’t know anyone here,” she says. “I just decided to sign up.”
She joined her first dance lesson shortly thereafter. “I was really, really bad, but I absolutely fell in love with it,” she says. “I felt like it was something I should have gotten to earlier.”
Because her cultural background is Indian, for Bansal, it also felt like she was reconnecting more to her roots. Monday nights became her release — even with her high level of ambition, she says with a laugh, nobody could keep her at work too late on Mondays.
Classes lasted for eight weeks at the beginner level, with the teacher providing both written and verbal feedback. She enjoyed it so much that, when the first dance academy wasn’t advancing fast enough for her, she moved to another company with more advanced lessons — 110%, once again.
With some lessons behind her, Bansal was proud of the dances she was able to perform at her own wedding. “If you compare the dances I did for my sister’s wedding to the ones I did for my own reception, you’d be like, ‘who is that person?’” she says.
Then she broke her foot; not while dancing, she was quick to point out. By the time she recovered, her husband — himself an experienced dancer — joined her in her dance pursuits. “It’s not just for stress relief,” she says, “it’s a good couples activity.”
Family, she says, is important. But of course, in typical sibling fashion, her sister takes the credit for her dance success.
As Bansal explained: “My sister says, ‘it’s because of my wedding you have found this passion and talent.’”
