Grace and Groove: How Hetal Joshi is Making Her Dancer Dreams Come True
“A dream is never big or small. I don’t dream till date. It is all plan. Every step is dream in itself towards the final goal.” Today’s woman dreamer, Hetal Joshi, is a dedicated dancer and the founder of Grace and Grooves. A passionate performing artist, she is focused on maintaining cultural tradition through folk and Bharatanatyam dances. She reflects on her life journey, how she balanced her technology career with dance, and how overcoming obstacles such as her mom’s health gave her the grit she needed to be an independent woman and founder. Enjoy!
1. Tell us your story. What inspired your passion for dance and founding Grace and Grooves?
Performing arts/arts, sports, education is all passion and a norm in my family. The environment itself is created for you to succeed with lot of love. Since our previous generations travelled often for work across India and internationally; maintaining culture & health was important. All of above activities binds us to our rich heritage and health too; especially traditional dances such as Indian Folk and Bharatanatyam.
However, I am the first to establish a dance school or company of its kind as I felt the need of creating an infrastructure in itself. This happened way-earlier than I thought. I saw malpractices/fraud in performing arts and several culture activities. It was painful to see kids suffering in the name of fun & culture. Above that, it was environment in my own schools, universities and institutes that offered me such a beautiful infrastructure that in-spite of everything that I was going through in my life, I was brought to a whole different level, year by year, and where I found myself! And I thought that maybe I will do this someday!
In 2004, I relaunched myself in Michigan, USA as an independent artist. From 35 students as an established business in 2011 in Texas to staggering 28 brands with success in each genre, program, transparency and now my own 150 students under me, exclusively by genre!
2. Not only are you a dancer, you also work in information technology management. How do you balance your time between these two paths?
Until 2019, my dance activities were weekend (4-8hrs work). Meanwhile on weekdays, I would take part-time IT work, or some boot camps to learn new skill sets. I had a disturbing life in my school yrs with constant pressures of social stigma as a girl due to mom’s health for almost a decade. “That time” itself taught me life-skills as I had the right people around me such as my dad, independent women, NRI aunts and all that environment of scholars and nerds. My priority were my kids and that was something that I missed in my upbringing. Nagaraj, my husband was back, then travelling Mon-Fri and so I would work around. Money was not that big in my part-time and I had my share of challenges with 2 young kids, but the job was remote, and I was able to focus on my kids. Eventually, I built myself a self-sustaining infra-structure such as having pure friendships of working moms like myself, good partners to do something together, reliable nanny, kitchen helper and maid as I needed and then the staff by field and I would take it as I could deliver and all on my bill, exclusively.
3. You are certainly a busy woman. What would you say is your "key" to success? What did you learn in building your company Grace and Grooves?
There is no such key to success. It really depends on your priorities and using your knowledge/education vs resources. In some of my fields, I am an average performer and so I don’t stop while in some I am niche or masters and yet I don’t stop ☺. I think the fact that i never got influenced by anybody kept me intact. I was self-aware. Planning, budgeting for every detail helped me reduce my stress! I never had to force myself at the cost of my mental health/kids/family and never felt the urge to compete with anybody as I had my plans set on my paper. And my plans were more exciting and fun as it made milestones. Everything was taken care of beautifully in given circumstances, with results and yet, my family was in peace. Probably it had something to do with all of my formal trainings, background, upbringing, environment and exposure so I knew what to do. Handling typical business-finances on higher level was something that came to me as learning. Not that I was careless about it, but I wish, I had more details and may be knew it earlier-about it as a business owner ☺.
4. As the platform for women dreamers, what is your next big dream?
A dream is never big or small. I don’t dream till date. It is all plan. Every step is dream in itself towards the final goal. Everything is happening together in all my fields one step at a time and it is sometimes overwhelming as well as exciting too! So, there is no such thing as – next. It is all present and today too I take it as it comes, and I follow my plan. I feel blessed to have the right people around me. I want to be as I am and maybe better too. Because as I was, I became better and I grew without anybody’s vote. The day I think that I will need people’s vote for anything, I will probably join politics ☺.
Thank you Hetal for sharing your inspiring story with us! We are excited to have you in our global women’s network!
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