I was just 6 years old when I attended my first Bollywood dance class in the basement of a neighbor’s house. It’s always held a special place in my heart because Indian dance has remained a part of my life since that day. And now, the world of South Asian dance has come to Netflix, with Best Of The Best hitting the streamer on Sept. 18.
Best Of The Best is centered around best friends Maya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia), two first-year students at UCLA, as they navigate their unique journeys in self-discovery while competing in the Best Of The Best dance competition with their South Asian dance team. It’s easily going to be one of my favorite movies of this year, not only for its dance performances, but for its exploration into deep themes of friendship, the expectation of parents, and managing ambition. Plus, the movie comprehensively showcases the world of dance through the lens of today’s dancers in the South Asian American diaspora — perhaps for the first time on American television.
For those not familiar with the world of competitive dance, you may be wondering, is Best Of The Best real? The short answer is yes, it was. The movie actually derives its inspiration from an early 2000s competition.
Best of the Best started in 2005 in New York City’s Tribeca Performing Arts Center. It was the first-of-its-kind, nationwide South Asian dance competition, hosted with the hopes of bringing college teams performing various types of South Asian dance — namely Bhangra, originating from Punjab; Garba, originating from Gujrat; and Bollywood — to the main stage for audiences of all backgrounds to appreciate.
The competition was the brainchild of Palak Sheth, who is the current director of privacy and public policy at Meta. Sheth was a collegiate dancer while attending the University of Michigan, which allowed her to witness firsthand how even within the South Asian diaspora, dancers from different backgrounds would rarely come out to support one another. Best of the Best emerged as a response, allowing dance styles of different Indian states to perform on the same stage for the same event.
Though the event no longer exists — it came to an end in 2012 — its legacy of unity and healthy competition endures. Though I can’t speak for every school, many universities — like my alma mater, Rutgers — take part in plenty of showcases that bring dancers together.
While the movie keeps the name of the event as a mark of honor, it also keeps that same spirit of unity and representation that the original event did. In a recent interview with The Today Show, Ramakrishnan and comedian and writer Hasan Minhaj dove into how long competitive dance has been a part of the South Asian collegiate community.Â
Best of the Best, both the movie and the event, just go to show that it’s never too late for representation, and that sometimes, the work you do today will ripple out more than you could have imagined.Â