Vinaya Seshan is a grade 10 student of Inventure Academy, Bengaluru. She has brought laurels to the country by participating and winning in the most renowned all-genre dance competition beating around 10,000 participants from around 43 countries which is held for children and young adults around the world. Her talent doesn’t stop here, the girl is also very good at football, and has performed a dance performance on football. She has bagged gold medal in the duet category and a bronze medal in the hip-hop group and solo categories in the Dance World Cup, Germany.
In talks with Vinaya:
1) How do you manage to dance in multiple genre?
I have not learnt classical dance formally. But I see dance dance as a good combination of mind and body co-ordination and self expression. Hip-hop is the genre my coach (Beekay) specialises in , while encourages and expenses us to Bollywood, contemporary and folk dance forms also.
2) Tell us about your passion about football.
In class 1, my first performance on stage was a song on football, “Goal, Goal…”, perhaps that triggered the interest. I started playing football when I was in grade 5 at Inventure. My coaches in Inventure (Mr. Jerry and Mr. Freddy) prepared me well to play in many positions. In 2015, I went to state junior team selection and was selected as a goal keeper. I have represented Karnataka juniour, U-19, and senior teams at the nationals. I have also represented Sports Authority of India (SAI) in the U-19 talent hunt tournaments. With the support of Ms. Chitra G, I also play for the Bengaluru United Football Club ( B.U.F.C) .
3) Highlight on your selection for Berserk Workshop.
The after school dance at Inventure and the production we have every 2 years gave me an opportunity for more professional coaching and performance on a larger scale. Berserk is a program conducted by Sublime Art Galleria which searches for talented individuals from various schools and exposed to week long training of music, dance, arts and drama. In 2014, I was chosen for dramatics and was trained by Jagriti in theatre. We had also put up a full length children’s production ( The Selfish Giant, November 2104).
4) Tell us about Romania Dance World Cup.
In 2015, I got a good break when I was nominated by Inventure through Berserk 2015 program to take part in a week long dance workshop conducted by professionals. Through this program I was identified to join the Dance World Cup 2015 team in Romania. We won bronze in the kids trio round, this gave us a promising start.
5) How was your preparation for Dance World Cup 2015, Germany?
Preparations for such events is a very long drawn affair and starts 5 to 6 months before the event. Practice sessions stretch for 2 hours at a time for 2 days a week. During the holidays practice sessions were extended up to 6 hours at a stretch even in the weekends.
6) How was your experience at the Dance World Cup, Germany?
The event had many great dancers and dance performances. Beekay had made sure that all performances stood out in terms of concept, spread some message, and it carried right through 4 to 5 minutes of performances. In the 2016 World Cup, we participated more vigorously and the medal tally was stronger ( 2 golds and one silver). We continued the same in our 2017 performance with the common thread being our choreographer, Mr. Bharathi Kannan (Beekay), who had lots of faith in us and put his best in terms of effort and creativity to make our performance stand out in a highly competitive event.
