Return to Bhangra: from dance clubs to gym clubs, young South Asian women reclaim a dance never meant for them.(culture)

Growing up in the mostly white suburb of Walnut Creek, California, Sonia Dass never imagined that she could become a bhangra dance performer. "I was very shy growing up," she says. "I could never have pictured myself on stage dancing in front of all these people." Neither did she feel much connection to her South Asian cultural background. Sonia's father is from a small village in Punjab, India, and her mother grew up in a Punjabi diasporic community in the Fiji Islands. Dancing was somewhat stigmatized in Sonia's family, with her mother not allowed to dance in her youth and Sonia herself discouraged from dancing except with close family. When she joined an all-female ...