The seeds of acclaimed screenwriter, photographer, and filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala’s new Prime Video series Waack Girls were sown in her last directorial venture, 2020’s Yeh Ballet, where we first saw Mekhola Bose, the dancer at the centre of the new show. The form of this high-octane street style of dance, originally created in the gay clubs of Los Angeles in the 1970s as an expression of rebellion and individualism, is put to spectacular use throughout the nine episodes of the series. At the same time, it becomes a medium to tell the stories of six young women, each looking to break away from individual struggles and societal and familial pressures to conform and find joy and fulfilment through dance. 

Despite its use of dance as a central narrative device, Taraporevala who co-wrote the show with daughter Iyanah Bativala and Ronny Sen, was keen to avoid the usual tropes of dance-themed stories. “At least in India, dance films have a specific structure, with two rival teams, and a dance competition at the end. Both in Yeh Ballet and Waack Girls, I studiously kept away from the competition at the end. I think both of them are quite original in the way that they play out,” she tells mid-day.