Time Capsule: When a boy from Vadodara made reality TV history
You're already singing the song aren't you?
December 21, 2009.
The reality show, Dance India Dance, uploaded an audition that created what can only be termed as a dance revolution. The video has 77 million views on YouTube and an unending amount of dance covers. On that day in Vadodara a participant named Dharmesh Yelande danced to Remo Fernandes’ Flute Song. The rest, as they say, is history.
By that point the show was in its second season. DID had created dancing stars such as Shakti Mohan and Kunwar Amar who both went onto star in the relatively bland Channel V teen drama Dil Dosti Dance. Already, dancers around the country were being exposed to the possibilities of dance as a profession and an art form. In two and a half minutes Dharmesh Sir took this perception to the next level.
Dharmesh Yelande was born in Vadodara, Gujarat. He dropped out of college and began working jobs that would allow him to practise and teach dance on the side. His appearance on the pioneering dance reality show Boogie Woogie was a good start but the real push came when he joined Dance India Dance. He didn’t win the show but he carved a space in India’s reality TV history that very few have been able to do since.
What was so life changing about his audition? Well, number one, the music. The Flute Song by Remo Fernandes became people’s ringtones, caller tunes and audition tracks. The internet boasts of many “Dharmesh sir flute song” covers. It’s safe to say, that man made it viral.
The combination of doing hip hop on a track that had an Indian sound was the perfect amount of contrast. Not to mention the undeniable wit in his choreography. Soon Dharmesh evolved his own style known as D-Style. It involved sharp, clean movements with a hip-hop base.
On August 11, 2020, the dancers on the reality show India’s Best Dancer paid a tribute to Dharmesh by recreating his first audition. He had come onto the show as a guest judge. Each wrist flick, chest pop and smile was perfectly memorised. They knew it by heart. That was how much that piece of dancing permeated the generations after it. Till date YouTube videos of the Flute Song have at least one comment reminiscing back to Dharmesh’s performance. It changed lives. It changed mine.