Siddhi Tambe, the India Breaking champion, has benefited from developing in limited confines and is now ready to take on the globe.
- From a Mumbai slum to the World Finals in New York: Bar-B B-Girl on the floor
- Siddhi Tambe, the current India Breaking champion, feels that the limits of her youth have provided her with an edge as she trains to compete against the entire world.
B-Girl Bar-B, her true name is Siddhi Tambe, was having been born and brought up in a slum in a western suburb of Mumbai. Later, she moved into the typical congested circumstances of a Bandra East one-room rented flat. These tiny and constricted spaces are excellent for honing hip hop’s popping and locking principles, which are distinguished by actions that emphasise muscle flexing and relaxation.
Since it was the 18-year-mother old’s Sneha’s unwavering encouragement, born of her own unmet dancing aspirations, that propelled the girl into Breaking and has now won her a trip to New York after earning India champion at the Red Bull BC One Cypher earlier in the month. “Main hamesha hilti dulti rehti thi” (I would keep swaying from one foot to the other and never stood still), Bar-B says, noting that her dance-mad mother saw her as groovy and endowed with a sense of rhythm and beat.
Whatever be Ganeshotsav Mandals, street dandiya under makeshift shamianas, beach-side koli colonies, tiny mirrored dance studios for amateur Bollywood’steps’ workpieces, or community centres ballroom dances in Christian neighbourhoods, Mumbai’s chawl and low-income housing localities have always boasted of a community dance culture. A similar community centre with broad windows and yellow-and-cream walls shared by her Cardinal Gracias High School in Subhash Nagar’s Ali Yawar Jang Marg was where B-Girl Bar-B made her initial steps in breaking.
“My mother took me to the ‘audition’, where you dance to a song, and the reward for being selected is you get to learn choreographed Bollywood dances under seniors. It’s there that Ashok Dada and other Dadas (older male dancers) taught me footwork, style and the basic moves of Breaking,’ she says feeling nostalgic.
Siddhi, who was very small for her age but not petite in the daring dance techniques she tried, was practising headspins on her own when she was discovered by her first crew. “I was a complete tomboy, with a boy-cut trying out stunts without fear. So these older boys thought they were teaching a boy initially,” she exclaims. The misinterpretation was rapidly clarified due to her tone, but the name B-Girl Sid was locked. “Siddhi got shortened to Sid and till I actually went into ‘crew battles’, I didn’t think of changing it. I used to love Barbie dolls and all things pink, so we changed it to B-Girl Bar-B,” she mentions.
Back home, Siddhi’s older sister was pursuing engineering, and Bar-B was hesitant to abandon academics. “I came from a poor household, so not studying or being bad at it wasn’t an option,” she says of her decision to study microbiology. “Yeah, identifying microorganisms, bacteria, and fungus is totally opposite from the innovative and challenging Breaking. “I’ve been more serious about Breaking since winning, but I’d like to get a PhD if all I end up doing is studying,” she adds.
As the tiniest member of the team, Bar-B was a sponge for backflips, ground drops, and freezes. “I had no idea it was called Breaking while I was studying,” she explains. These were not the ‘wow’ moves, but rather the fundamentals, which were learned with attention, much like the taalim of a traditional dance form, broken down into little motions and not permitted to proceed until the bit section was mastered.
B-Girl Bar-B has made a lot of progress from the neck grooves and march steps, scooby-doos and leo-walks she learned as a child, and has left beyond her childhood fantasies of appearing on reality TV shows. “This gives me the opportunity to represent India and gather experience at a number of jams and clashes,” she adds.
It will also be her first time flying on an aircraft. Not that she hasn’t passed and produced her own motion before: Bar-spectacular B’s universe is hand-stands, graduating to air-flares when the upturned legs whirl through the air with hands creating a circle.
