Indian origins, 25-year-old twins – Poonam and Priyanka Shah’s mother had sent them to dance school to learn Bharata Natyam and she herself had to discontinue half way through in Gujarat, following marriage and immigration to North America. They are trained in the classical dance form in Chicago, for almost nine years before dabbling into the Bollywood dance and then like many others got trained in hip-hop in Los Angeles.
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Much to their disbelief, their home-made dance and choreography videos that are posted on YouTube have gone viral, getting millions of views from U.S. to India and elsewhere.
“With our channel, we wanted to simply share our choreography, not knowing they would be so popular,” Priyanka said. American singer-songwriter Christopher Brown has shared one of their videos on his official Facebook page.
“We had three Facebook videos go viral, with 5M, 1M and 9M hits each. Going viral is wholly unpredictable. One video was just practicing in our kitchen, one was in a studio and one was on the dance reality show ‘Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa’ stage in Mumbai last summer! So, there is no formula to going viral and we just believe in creating awesomeness. Being happy with your work is what’s most important and to believe in your work!” Priyanka said.
“We had absolutely no clue any of our videos would go viral. It was beyond insane to see so many people from different walks of life, different countries, different ages, sharing our videos. Everyone’s comments were so positive and uplifting! It is so heartwarming to receive so much support and love!” Priyanka who spoke for both the sisters, said.
“As far as choreography, we have both were always been creative people and we like to experiment! We have been choreographing as long as we can remember – school dances, weddings, college dance teams. We have always thought to expand our dance training and we especially love Hip-hop,” Priyanka said, adding that their mother is “very happy seeing her dance dreams fulfilled.”
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“We love to inspire others to create work they think is awesome too! If we can make someone on the internet feel the passion we feel when creating art, that’s the ultimate goal,” they said.
“We don’t consider ourselves professional dancers, actually! We aspire towards being in the industry in the future,” they said.
“Meeting Karan Johar and Farah Khan was surreal as they are our absolute favorites! Their movies literally made our childhood magical and it was wonderful to perform in front of them. The coolest part of being on such a prestigious show was meeting all the Bollywood celebrities and getting to see all of the hard work behind the scenes that makes the magic happen on screen. It was a great learning experience for us!” Priyanka said.
“As far as work, we would like to build our brand, P&P, together. Our ultimate goal with dance is just to keep learning, growing and creating.”
By Premji
