*Anish Popli, founder of Choreotheque dance institute in Delhi, India, talks about why sharing through dance is an important agenda for our new global economy. ***

Art activists led by Quincy Jones are lobbying to get an arts department under Obama’s administration.

I hope dance gains a whole White House floor — to promote formal and informal dance spaces, companies, dance movies, and dance health and education.

From Miley Cyrus’ view-hogging YouTube dance battles to the ever-contagious and selling Bollywood dance movies — dance remains the people’s choice of entertainment and catharsis.

And at the same time, dance is political. Unlike any science or sociology, the way we twirk our bodies to music reveals patterns of social movement, the immigration of ideas and people, the modernization of societies, and the definitions of gender, race, and class, which like dance, are identities bound by their transience. 

In Delhi, where I’ve spent the last six weeks, Salsa dance is everywhere. Seeing Indians break down the intricate Latin, Spanish, Caribbean, and African style told me that above all qualities, dance imbibes understanding. After eight years of Bush, our world can roll and bounce right into a culture of exploration and learning.

Dance harbors history and innovation, and therefore dance can both measure and mend the disjointedness of social change.

Anish Popli, a dancer in Delhi, believes dance prepares people for sharing. And sharing is how we grow into productive change.

Popli runs Choreoteque, a visionary dance centre teaching Salsa, Merengue, Jazz, Hip-Hop and Modern — and I was moved when Popli said that dance should inform policy in our Obama era of opportunity.

Watch him and his students move — and you’ll see why he’s right!

 —Malena Amusa