Shruti Sinha is a dancer, actor, social media influencer and digital content creator. With more than I.5 million followers on Instagram, she’s changing norms and breaking all barriers. She recently joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX Influencer A-List series. In the exclusive conversation, she spoke to us about how she used her passion for dance to grow professionally, her journey into digital content creation, public response on pole dance and much more.
She commenced by explaining how she got into digital content creation, she said, “I want to clear that firstly an actor and a dancer. People saw me on TV, liked me and started following on social media. That’s how I started creating digital media content. I love being in front of cameras, so content creation comes easy to me. I started enjoying it because of the response and growth I was getting. Sometimes like everyone, I have artist block when I don’t know what to do next. I love following trends in my own different ways. I want to do something out of the box and not just follow trends.”
When asked about if negative comments or trolls have ever come in between the content she wants to create, she replied, “No, not a hindrance for me but it would be for a lot of people. I have grown a thick skin to these comments. I am a pole dancer and people look down upon it. Pole dancing is a beautiful and difficult art form. People think that if you are a pole dancer you are a stripper. I got a lot of hate on that but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Now when I post it, I have millions of views on my poll dancing.”
Explaining the difference between pole dancing and exotic pole dancing, she said, “Exotic pole dancing is what strippers do and is very sexy. You can’t do pole dancing with full clothes because you need skin to grip pole. So automatically there are short clothes which people mistake to be a stripper. I am trying to do more graceful contemporary dance on pole.”
On clearing if she chose graceful pole dancing over exotic pole dance because of social media comments, she added ,”No. People anyway don’t know the difference between the two. I personally don’t do it because I feel like I want to master this first and then go to exotic pole dance. I am much focused while learning anything.”
Sharing an instance from her trip she said, “I wanted to click a picture climbing and doing a move on a street lamp. A girl who’s educated and being in the same industry refused it by saying that this place is very decent and your pole dancing is indecent. I gave back to her by telling her how much hard work goes behind every single move.”
Picking up the cause to normalize pole dance and speaking on if there are many influences and creators to support and respect poll dance as an art form that requires so much, she responded, “I don’t want to take the responsibility to change the world because one person can’t but I am doing my bit. I never liked teaching when I was 13-years-old and I thought that when I will be 30- 35 years and then if nothing workout in my life then I’ll teach. But I started teaching pole dancing because I want to introduce more people to the pole. They come for a free trial class, people who come to me and ask me about pole, I am ready to give them answers and educate them on that. It is basic art form which is fairly new in India but now it’s coming up because Jacqueline did it and lot of people are doing it.”
Talking about her social media journey she shared, “Every time I have to send my insides to my team or any brand and when I open it, they say that your interaction and impressions are so good. Whenever I am creating, I look at it like probably my audience would like to see. I haven’t changed myself. I always put out what I like but keeping in mind that my audience would like it too. I keep asking them what they want to see.”
Emphasizing on the organic element of her creations, she said, “Initially I used to post pole dancing videos and there wasn’t a lot of interaction. But one day I just shoot a video, posted it and I got 5 million views, I started posting again. I knew my pole dancing videos aren’t doing well but still I posted them for myself. I kept a balance and that’s how my growth happened.”