Groove Therapy Connects with Marginalised Groups Through Dance

This article is presented by Vodafone Upsiders. We profiled a bunch of young Australians who are following their passions and perfecting their pursuits outside of their day jobs. You can watch the episode featuring Vanessa Marian Varghese and read our interview with her below.

Vanessa Marian Varghese fell in love with dance in the United Arab Emirates when she was three. By age five, she was in Australia learning Bharatanatyam, a classic form of Indian dance. Then came hip-hop, dancehall, Afro house, Afrobeat, and baile funk. If a style exists that began on the street, Vanessa's probably tried it.

About a year ago, the 28-year-old started Groove Therapy: weekly dance classes in Sydney and Melbourne where the lights are low, mirrors are banned, and everyone is welcome. Through her dance programs, Vanessa also engages with minority groups, young people, and the elderly to build new relationships, confidence, and skills through movement.

She explains how a passion project grew into a way of life, and why failure is important.

VICE: Tell us how you started out in dance.
Vanessa Marian Varghese: Since I was young I've been taking all sorts of dance classes from prolific teachers all the way down to unknown enthusiasts. I've travelled to Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, London, New York, and Brazil training either formally under teachers and OGs of various street-dance styles, or, for example, walking into a favela in Brazil and dancing with the locals. This might sound kind of 'cool', but I was just travelling and partying. I'm interested in dance, so I'd go into a place and be like, 'What is that? How do you do the footwork?' Then I'd learn it.

Has dancing always been your side gig?
Apart from a short check-out chick stint in my younger years, the way I paid the rent while I was studying was by teaching dance classes at my local dance school. It was something I did on the side and it turned into a career very accidentally.

Can you tell us about how Groove Therapy began?
Groove Therapy is the result of so many failures: of trying to start an online homewares store and failing, of trying to be an art director and failing. I studied law, but I finished and didn't want to do it. I studied interior design. I studied marketing, but nothing really sat. Whenever I felt really lost and didn't know what I was going to do with my life I'd take a dance class. After one class I booked a job, and then another one, and then I started teaching again but it was different. I'd hire out a hall and just tell people to come. It grew from there. It was able to succeed because I gained so much knowledge from failing at other things. It all kind of ended up working together to create the end product, Groove Therapy.

The Upsiders episode featuring Vanessa

How do you describe Groove Therapy?
It does so many things right now, but what we're known for are dance classes. The aim is to take the fear out of dance and to make it accessible to every type of person without turning it into a gimmick or dumbing it down. When you come in as someone who has never taken a dance class you can feel like you've missed the boat. Maybe you feel too old, or too overweight, or too uncoordinated. None of that matters. We give you a proper dance class and proper education about the roots and the foundations of the moves. It's judgment free. It's a community, and we try to shy away from the idea of a scene.

In what ways do you engage all sorts of different people?
In an effort to make dance accessible to all walks of life we have launched a series of community programs that reach out to more marginalised groups. It's about working with groups and people who often feel misunderstood but come from places where these dance styles are born. It's a way to connect. Tell us about the groups.
I've gone into Indigenous communities, and I also trialled an eight-week program with migrant girls, some of whom were refugees. That was about building community and developing confidence through dance and expression. It was also a really good time.

You work with elderly people too, right?
I teach classes for dementia patients in an elderly home. It started with me just teaching Vicky, an older lady. Her daughter, Shay, approached me in a cafe. We quickly learned you can't teach a dance routine to someone with dementia. They don't remember! It frustrates them. Over weeks of visiting we realised it wasn't about learning a routine; it was about letting Vicky enjoy the moment. We found she reacted best to songs she knew, so the playlist moved to Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones—the classics. When the music is playing people with dementia go from not being able to converse to singing all the lyrics, dancing, and interacting like any other person would.

We've spoken a lot about dancing but music is just as important. What's an average Groove Therapy playlist?
There is no average playlist! We mix up global street music. The most well known being hip-hop. I'm so obsessed that I can tell the difference between West Coast hip-hop, East Coast hip-hop, Dirty South and the way you dance to that; Baltimore, Bmore Club… We play Afro Beats from Nigeria and Ghana. Baile funk from Brazil. Dancehall from Jamaica. I tend to try to speak to a genre or genres that feed into each other for a class so people can immerse themselves in one style at a time. It's also a cool way to start a conversation about other cultures without preaching. People take a class and if they care enough, which in a lot of cases they do, they'll ask afterwards what music you're playing. It's a subtle way of teaching people and trying to cure ignorance. It's my way, anyway.

What advice do you have for anyone looking to turn a passion project into something more?
Try to find a mentor and set deadlines together so that you're held accountable for getting things done. From there, you have to jump in headfirst and just launch. Your website might not be perfect, the entire payment system may not be perfect, the logo may not be perfect, but launch and then tweak those little glitches as you go. With Groove Therapy, I pulled the entire thing together in a week. Instead of fretting over trivial things, I ironed out the little bumps as I went.

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