This past month in Detroit has been a blur. I can’t understand how it is already December. Between learning the ropes at work, keeping up with Challenge projects, and enjoying holiday festivities around Detroit, it seems like there is barely time for anything else.

Except for dance. There’s always time for dance.

Last year, when I was City Year at Northwestern High School, I began helping out with the Diamond Divas dance team. I choreographed a piece for their concert, and spent a few weeks at practice teaching them and learning from them. The Diamond Divas perform a variety of styles – hip hop, ballet, contemporary, majorette, African dance – and tell compelling stories through their pieces.

Thanks to great flexibility from my boss at work, I have been able to go back and continue teaching. Only thing, there’s just one style of dance I’ve ever learned – Indian dance.

And so, for an hour and a half every week, I am able to go teach the girls Bollywood. I get to see them pick up on the attitude, adapt the style, make up their own version of the lyrics. I get to put a cultural style of expression that I grew up falling in love with out there, and see others pick it up and run with it. And in return, the girls teach me hip hop and contemporary.

It is a truly beautiful cultural exchange, which I’m so glad to be a part of.