Dance hair for extremely short hair - Part I

Bonsoir!!

Traditionally the Indian/South Asian view of a beautiful woman is one with long hair, hence a large majority of South Asian girls have long hair, especially Indian classical dancers, but what about all those non-Indian Indian classical dancers who have short hair? Like reeeealllyyy short hair... Well this is the first in a series of 4 blog posts to give you the answer!

A good friend of mine agreed to be my guinea pig this time, so we'll dive right in with the first hairstyle. If you remember my post from a while ago entitled Doughnuts and Brooches you'll notice that this is a variation of the same style. It's typically for Bharatanatyam but could equally be used for semi-classical pieces or classical based dances such as Gaudiya Nritya. The basic idea is two buns, one essentially on top of the other. I think the two buns should be quite close together, although as you'll see this is not always possible with hair as short as this. I also feel it is important for Bharatanatyam that any high bun should have its flowers visible from the front.

This is the length of hair I was working with...

and this is how I did the style, as step-by-step as I could manage...

So I started by creating a ponytail, well more of a tuft, from the longer half of the hair. I just used a regular hair band. Obviously it is best to use one that matches the colour of the hair but it isn't essential. I also used some clips to neaten up the front but I didn't have any black ones so they do stand out, but obviously black ones wouldn't be seen on a stage.

I then used a small hair doughnut and a thicker almost scrunchie-like hair band to secure it, as well as bun pins. As you can see the tuft doesn't quite cover the doughnut hence I implore you, when doing dance hair for hair that is this short, USE HAIR GEL. 

Then as you can see I gathered the remaining hair into the smallest ponytail known to man, aka a stump. Securing again with clips and pins that should have been black. The stump gives you something to work with and if I had used gel this would all have been so much easier. 

This is the final product and all I've done is add flowers with lots of bun pins. The white flowers are the same ones I used in my other previous hair posts and the red ones can be seen on my Southall Haul post. 

This style isn't actually hard to achieve, it's only hard when the hair your working with is as incredibly short as this hair is and if, like I was, you are doing this without water, gel or hair spray!

I shall remind you again that doing hair for any Indian classical dance is not for the faint-hearted, you will need an endless supply of hair spray and an endless supply of 50 different types of hair pins... but it's all worth it in the end!

Stay tuned for part II !