Aaja Nachle - Dance With Me
by SpockLikesCats
Characters: Spock/Uhura, Gaila, OCs
Summary: Uhura's talent for dancing possesses Spock's … thoughts.
Big Thanks to Linstock for the lovely illustration!
Rating: T
~/\~
"Spock, come see us on Saturday evening, please."
Spock raised an eyebrow at Nyota. They had eaten dinner and were seated in the "living room" of his Officer Quarters. Why it was called a "living room" he did not know; the entire apartment was given over to various aspects of living ….
He and his … teaching assistant … were nearly finished marking student assignments and he had - since before dinner - been aware that she was vibrating with a high level of energy. Higher than usual, that is.
"Saturday evening," he pretended to muse. "And I am being invited to …?"
"The dance performance," Uhura said rather plaintively. "The one we've been rehearsing for two months."
"Ahh," he said. This is a little ritual of theirs, like that which his parents had performed, much to each other's amusement and often resulting in hints to young Spock to go make scientific observations outdoors, or practice his current lesson on the lyre – out on the terrace – or otherwise make himself scarce.
"You're teasing, aren't you. You do remember? 2100 hours at the auditorium?"
"These rehearsals which have claimed your attention for so much time … rehearsals for which you have forsaken my company? … hmmm …" he looked away, pretending to consider, then gave her an impassive look. "I should hope I will find it an adequate use of my time, Cadet Uhura."
"Of course you will! Well … it is strictly entertainment, but I would like for you to see what I've been working on; after all, the choreography is extremely complicated and Gaila and I have practiced outside of our group practice hours too because we want it to be perfect, we love doing this dance, it's an old dance out of the South Asian tradition, and it's very physically demanding, but we –"
"You appear to be quite excited about the prospect of performing this dance. I do not believe you inhaled during that recitation."
"I am excited! We have worked very hard to make it as wonderful as possible. Not just me, of course, Lieutenant Dixit and Lieutenant Merchant have taught us everything! And it's beautiful. As you know, Gaila is a very good dancer and Dixit and Merchant grew up doing this dance, and Dixit teaches intercultural dance and ritual, and …" she took a breath, "I hope you haven't forgotten what a proficient dancer I am." She gave him a certain look, her eyelids lowering to display her long eyelashes, then flashing up so her intense eyes made contact with his.
He fixed his gaze on hers, his pupils dilating. "I make it a point to remember things, Nyota, especially where you are concerned."
She smiled, accurately receiving his signal, and bounded to her feet, extending her hands.
She danced him into the bedroom.
He moved to her; Nyota's arms slid around his waist and she looked up at him, love making her face radiant. Spock pushed her hair away from her shoulder, tracing a finger over the contours of her clavicle. His voice came out a little rough. "Still, you will not show me your costume?"
"It's in my locker in the dorm. It will be a surprise! And I hope you'll like it."
"My Nyota, if it is covering you, I may in fact be envious …, although I prefer it be a modest costume. I would not like to see you uncovered in the presence of others …"
Her eyes smouldered with desire. Perhaps she was distracting him. Nevertheless ….
He cupped her chin and slowly kissed her mouth. When they broke the kiss a smile stole across her lips. "I know you sometimes are a stereotypically possessive Vulcan, but mightn't I dress like all the other dancers …?"
"… Only in my presence," he whispered, his voice smoky.
"Well … we'll see about that, my dear Commander. May I uncover you right now?"
"By all means, Nyota; you remove my uniform with even more alacrity than I."
~/\~
The dance stage is topped with elaborately patterned inlaid wood. Two groups of nine women – Academy cadets and some staff, all of whom Spock recognizes from disparate disciplines and offices – file on from the wings, led by two lovely South Asian women, Lieutenants Dixit and Merchant, who come to the center, dip into elaborate bows, and rise to speak in unison:
"Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to our performance! We present the Aaja Nachle Academy Dance Troupe!"
There is applause. Spock recognizes many of his students in the audience, along with a great number of instructors and Academy staff.
There are about four young men in the troupe too, and at the loud claps of some drums, they leap out from the wings wearing loose white outfits which allow them to jump into handstands, springing back and forth in an arch forming in front of Madhuri Dixit and Pahlavi Merchant, who begin the dance ….
Two words, whispered in rhythm, begin the song: "janaki, janaki". A dhol, oboe-like, states the musical pattern, with some beats behind it on tabla and the sharp, clapping drums, and another tonal rhythm, then lyrics, sung in a flirtatious way by a female voice. No dancer is singing, though the leads are moving their mouths to the words. The singer (Cadet Suni, from his Interspecies Ethics class) is in a small spotlight on the edge of the stage, to the right. The music is coming from the orchestra pit.
The better to highlight the dancers, he supposes. With some part of his mind he does not usually use, he takes in the colors and sensuality of the women's costumes. The lead dancers wear waist-length tops of silk over matching full skirts, Dixit in turquoise blue on black, Merchant in deep pink. As they turn, their bare backs are revealed, crossed with thin cords tied in the middle, to him a very suggestive arrangement. The other dancers, who are all dressed in the same fashion, wear short-sleeved tops of various hues ... but Spock's gaze is riveted on Nyota.
Her silken top and skirt are similar in color to his science blue uniform, a hue she calls "azure" … is this a subtle message of allegiance only to him? The fabric clings to her bust and upper back but leaves her torso bare down to the hipbones. Spock feels a tightening sensation in his deepest gut; it is sexual and possessive at once; he is re-experiencing sensations of 7.23 hours ago, when she kissed him all over his face and stroked the tips of his ears and tongued the base of his throat and combed her fingers through his hair; how he laid his cheek on her ribs and traced his fingers down over that muscled, warm golden brown abdomen, and heard her heart speed up as his fingers excited her sex and scent, how he kissed his way down her torso to spend minutes deepening her excitement, hearing her breath catch, her vocalizations, and skimmed his lips up to kiss her budded breasts and upward to find her mouth with his as he …. He has to stop thinking about that, if only while in public.
Now her torso – my woman's, he briefly cannot help but think – is bared for any and all to see, and is moving sensually ... He breathes deeply to draw in calm. It seems I am a stereotypically possessive Vulcan, indeed.
The tight band of the skirt nestles just below Nyota's hipbones, and layers and layers of light, filmy, colored fabric bell out, banded halfway down and at the wide hem with decorative beads (for weight, he surmises, as he observes the flow and whirling circle of the fabric). He focuses wider now, caught by the pattern of the skirts, the dance, the women moving in unison, twirling and dipping, gyrating and switching their hips to the beat. Their feet are bare, their ankles circled by bracelets with tiny bells that chime with each step – not something Spock has seen en masse like this – and it subtly disturbs his equilibrium.
Spock doesn't know a great deal of Hindi. The song lyrics concern a man and a woman meeting in a market and flirting, the woman losing some jewelry, and the man bringing it back to the her, and "… dance with me, dance with me, one, two, three …" These are sung by Cadet Suni, who maintains a playful expression, but nothing compared with the faces of the women dancing. Lieutenants Dixit and Merchant are mouthing the lyrics with flirtatious expressions as they circle and turn and dip their heads and raise them up, and accentuate the beat with their beautiful, lightly muscled arms, and the drums and dhol make hypnotic sounds … but now is not the time to think of lieutenants, this is a time to appreciate the women … as women ….
For this dance is a distillation of femininity. According to historical records, ancient Vulcan women danced like this, but they do not now, more's the pity, for Vulcan women are graceful as these women are graceful … he almost sighs aloud.
Spock realizes he is decidedly not in his rational mind.
He is caught in the rhythms like a fish in a net. The rhythms not just of the music, but of the dancers: their graceful arm gestures done with precision, the arcing sweeps of their feet, the swirling of their skirts, the undulation and occasional hard beats of their hips, the gentle roundness of their stomachs over the bands of their skirts, the colors of the women's skin – many shades of brown and ivory and golden beige and black … blue (an Andorian cadet 3rd/class), green (Gaila), the caramel color of Nyota's … her navel, a jewel winking from it … her hair, in its usual style, but with jewels woven in to her crown, is swinging out with the beat … her neck, moving left, right, swaying like a reed in a breeze, even her eyes communicating the beat, flicking this way and that, her brows playfully rising, first one, then the other. Dixit and Merchant each lead a small circle of women, and at one point, Uhura and Gaila take the lead in their respective circles for twenty-one beats.
Their gift for dance is obvious, with this dance so complicated it took months to learn.
Nyota's eyes are sparkling, her skin is moist, yet her physical labor is hidden by the grace in the dance. Is this not the essence of the Terran female before the recent past, the Vulcan woman of ancient times? The feminine mien that hid the difficulty of their work, the dignity that hid their suffering, the grace with which they lived, that hid a steely determination to make good lives for their families and community; grace that either celebrated their connubial love or, masking, pretended it … the moving beauty that had sometimes protected them from primal male rage. Or, appreciated by the male as a woman's celebration of her life and capabilities, an attractant ….
Heads dip in unison, hips circle and switch, skirts flow and hems rise and settle, ankles are exposed, and faces wink out from behind delicately gesturing hands and are momentarily hidden, emerging with broad smiles. Torsos, variously curved and softly muscled, undulate, and the dance is fast, yet somehow leisurely in its sensuality ….
He is lost, transported to a time not his own, a time and place made by women, the time of the dance, the place of womanly graces and seduction.
~/\~
She comes to him afterward, glowing, perspiring, blushing, eyes alight with enthusiasm and accomplishment. "So … what did you think?"
"I think," he says slowly, as under a spell, "that you had better get your cloak and slippers."
She looks down, hesitant, thinking rapidly, and the sound of his next words makes her eyes come to his.
"… And come with me. Immediately."
The rasp in his voice brings out her radiant smile.
"Right away, Commander," she says, and bounds away for the outer clothing that will temporarily hide her beauty.
He is hers, completely – he knows this now – it is irrevocable and probably has been since the day they first "locked horns" in his Discourse Analysis class. He is possessed by her, in both senses of the word. Spock sighs inwardly, the same sort of sigh he used to see from his mother, one of loving exasperation, an expression of surrender and unity and adoration.
A/N – in honor of our sensuality as women, of the various ways we bind ourselves in sisterhood and in relationship to our significant others.
If you liked the story, please let me know! Reviews really keep us writers going. If you have constructive suggestions, those are equally welcome.
Many thanks to Linstock for the illustration, and suggestions concerning Spock's focus!
You can find "Aaja Nachle" on You Tube. Just google the title and Madhuri Dixit for one version (the HD one from the movie is best) and then have a look at the one from an Indian variety show featuring Pahlavi Merchant, with a surprise guest! (Look for "Aaja Nachle, Pahlavi Merchant on ….")
Dixit and Merchant, and this sensual, exciting dance, inspired this story. I have watched this dance a hundred times and haven't tired of it yet. "If only," I think, and wish I had learned to dance like this (unlike Nyota, it would take me a lot more than a couple of months).