We recently connected with Swati Tiwari and have shared our conversation below.
Swati, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
By showing up to the studio to create choreography consistently. Creating choreography is the hardest thing I do — it has to appeal to and challenge my dancers and has to be entertaining to our audiences. Knowing that I can do hard things consistently gives me confidence.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I lead a Bollywood Performance dance company called Boston Bollywood. Bringing a community together in the love of South Asian Culture is what makes me wake up everyday and do the work I do. Boston Bollywood has now been around for 8 years bringing folks from all walks of life together in the love of dance. Our classes and workshops are held in the Cambridge area and we perform to sold out audiences twice a year — our next performance being in June! (June 7, 8)
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. The most important skill that had the most impact is how to truly listen — when you are building a community, bringing together people from all walks of life, you have to be able to truly listen (and observe) and figure out what their deepest desire is. Most people want to be heard, seen and understood. They can only trust when they feel seen. 2. Discipline – I learned to do the work despite how I felt in that moment.
3. Adaptability – I learned to understand that change was the only constant and that in order to survive any change (especially changes that the pandemic brought about), one had to learn to pivot.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Extreme ownership — It helped me understand how to lead. It taught me how to keep my ego aside and take complete ownership of anything that happens in my business and that there was no one to blame but me in case of a failure.
Contact Info:
- Website: bostonbollywood.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bostonbollywood/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BostonBollywood
Image Credits
Sainath Varikuti Kai Zhou
