‘Waack Girls’ review: Sass and heart on the dance floor and beyond it

Sooni Taraporevala’s new show is about a group of young women from Kolkata whose tongues are as sharp as their bodies are fluid. Waack Girls uses the kinetic dance style called “waacking” that originated in the queer community in America in the 1970s as a metaphor for a journey from uncertainty to self-assertion.

The Prime Video series, which is in Hindi with English and Bengali thrown in, has two main protagonists. Lopa (Rytasha Rathore), the openly lesbian daughter of a wealthy builder (Nitesh Pandey), wants to try her hand at talent management. To the annoyance of her family and her girlfriend Leena (Sayasha Pillai), Lopa devotes considerable time and money towards helping ace waacker Ishani set up a dance group.

Ishani (Mekhola Bose) lives with her grandfather in a rambling mansion. The grandfather is the Shakespearean actor Subroto Mitra – a possible nod to the legendary cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who shot Satyajit Ray’s early films. The patriarch is played by Barun Chanda, himself a Ray alum.

Another Ray connection pops up in Ishani’s neighbour and friend Manik, which was also Ray’s pet name. Manik (Achintya Bose) persuades Ishani to accept Lopa’s proposal to lead a waacking group from oblivion to virality.

Like Lopa and Ishani, each of the troupe members has a point...

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