THE BELLY TWINS
Shaking Up Hollywood Entertainment

There’s more than meets the eye for the “Belly Twins,” Neena and Veena Bidasha, Michel W. Potts finds out after a one-on-one with the belly dancing twins, who’ve gone from obscurity to sensation in the tough world of Hollywood entertainment.

As twins, there’s more to Neena and Veena than meets the eye.

First of all, they’re not identical twins, strictly speaking. Neena has a small, pinhead-sized mole high on her right cheek; Veena has one in exactly the same spot on her left cheek. That single, almost indiscernible discrepancy essentially makes them mirror images of one another.

In all other respects, they share the same quirks and idiosyncrasies one would assume to find in any pair of identical twins. One will begin a sentence and the other one will finish it, or even speak in unison with the same tone and inflection. But on stage, or in front of the camera, they let their dancing do the talking.

Professionally, Neena and Veena Bidasha are known as the “Belly Twins,” a belly dancing duo whose uniqueness catapulted them from relative obscurity ten years ago into an entertainment sensation today that encompasses stage, film and television.
Ten years ago, they were a novelty, but these days their success has inspired others to do a double take. “We’re not the only twins in Hollywood,” Neena acknowledges.
“There are tons coming out of the woodwork because we inspired lots of twins. They think, ‘Oh, I’m a twin, I can do that!’”
“Just because you’re a twin, big deal,” Veena interjects. “You’ve got to have the right look, you’ve got to have the right talent. You’ve got to bring more to the table than being a twin.”

“And you’d be surprised how many of them don’t necessarily get along,” Neena adds. Then, pointing to her sister, “I love her,” she declares. “She’s my best friend.”
“I think that’s why we like our work so much, because we spend it with someone we like,” Veena explains.

That love, that closeness, was there well before they were born, they maintain. “When twins are in the same womb, they already develop a kinship with your twin. Every twin will say that,” Neena says.

“And then, of course, Indians believe how and why your soul is in which body, so I’m sure our souls had something to do with picking in this life to be twins,” Veena adds.
The twins were born on March 25 in Sacramento, California, with Veena being the eldest by five minutes. They prefer not to reveal the year -- “This is Hollywood,” Neena says, well aware that in the entertainment industry age implies an expiration date. Since they are both Aries, “we were told that we were very psychic and spiritual,” Veena notes.

Their interests are primarily the same, although one might pursue a particular subject on her own, but it is not long before the other takes it up as well. Veena, for example, took time out to study improv comedy, “and I said, ‘Oh, teach me, because I didn’t have the time,’” Neena says. “Sometimes I feel like I get it through osmosis. And the same with Veena. If I’ve learned how to do something, she’ll just get it in no time.”

Relationships

Although neither of them is in a serious relationship, they are in such sync as sisters that they are attracted to the same kind of man. “One of the things that is very important because we’re so spiritual is that the guy has to be, too,” Veena comments. “That’s number one for us, and it has to be number one for them, too.”

But when one is in a relationship and the other isn’t, there has been no jealousy or rivalry between them. “We made a promise that we’d never let a guy get between us,” Neena says. “We’ve always felt that no guy was worth fighting over.”
If anything, they are mutually supportive. “We are each other’s teachers and each other’s student. If I get down, she pulls me up. When she gets down, I pull her up,” Veena asserts.

Misery loves company? “No, we don’t allow that to happen,” Neena adds.
Living two minutes from each other in Toluca Lake, they spend just as much time socializing with each other when they’re not working on a routine or performing. “A lot of it has to do with ideas,” Neena explains. “Sometimes when we’re together, that’s when we get a lot of creative juices flowing and we come up with a lot of ideas at that time.”
Their partnership is based on give-and-take, in the truest sense. When they’re working on a routine, “the music drives everything,” Veena says. “We’ll pick a song that we both agree that we like, and that will determine how long the choreography will take. If the song is three to five minutes long, then the choreography will take a couple of days. The more complicated the music, the longer it takes.”

Intuition is their shorthand. “We had situations where we’ll hear the music and we’ll both envision the same choreography,” Neena laughs. “I couldn’t do that with any of our other dancers, because they have their own set of ideas or points of reference.”

In the beginning, because they each had different dance instructors, they had different dance styles. “So when we came together, there were things that came from different ideas, but in the end it synced together. The execution may not have been the same, but the vision was,” Veena says.
“Just because you’re twins, it doesn’t mean your movements are going to be in sync,” interjects Neena. “You do have to practice that, you have to be in tune with that. Now it so second nature to us because we do it so much. Ninety percent of the time we agree on the choreography. It’s not like that with your typical dancers.”

Dancing in Their Blood

By the age of five, dancing was as natural to the two of them as walking. “Because we’re Punjabis, we grew up listening to Bhangra music and watching Bollywood films,” Veena points out.
“So we always had that interest to move to the beat,” Neena says.

Moving to the beat soon evolved toward serious study. In their early teens, the twins focused their energies on learning every kind of dance other than Bollywood and Bhangra.
“I’ve always been fascinated with movement,” Veena admits. “As we got older, I began to realize that as people start moving, their personalities show though on how they move. So it’s even beyond dance.”
But when it came to belly dancing, “everything made sense, as far as dance movement,” she says. “When you learn certain types of dances, some things just didn’t feel right, like being on point for ballet, for example. It doesn’t feel natural, and to this day I still don’t like doing point. But belly dancing feels more natural, more tribal, especially to women.”

They turned professional in the mid-1990s, yet the twins did not start out as a team. Veena moved to Hollywood to pursue her career, while Neena pursued hers in San Francisco, choosing to stay close to home and take care of their ailing mother who was suffering at the time from severe rheumatoid arthritis.

As a soloist, Veena got her break in 1994 when she appeared on stage at that year’s Academy Awards ceremony opening a dance number for a song that had been nominated from the Disney hit Aladdin. Hundreds of belly dancers had auditioned for the part, some even flying in from out of state, but choreographer Debbie Allen ultimately chose Veena because she was the only dancer who could integrate belly dancing with Indian dance.

Almost immediately after the show aired, Neena, with her mother’s blessing, flew down to Los Angeles to team up with Veena. When Allen found out Veena had a twin sister, “she was actually mad that Neena hadn’t auditioned,” Veena recounts. “She said she would have really wanted the two of us. But I honestly didn’t think she would want the two of us; I thought she only wanted one.”

Too ‘Foreign-Looking’

In Hollywood, they soon discovered, their being twin belly dancers was a novelty act with limited appeal, “and it wasn’t welcomed with open arms,” Neena recalls. Bookers and casting agents told them they didn’t “represent Middle America” and were too “foreign-looking.”

And there was a problem with the snake. The sisters often used either pythons or boa constrictors in their act, the snakes entwining themselves around their bodies and writhing to the rhythm as the women danced. “People don’t relate to snakes,” the sisters remember being told, but they persisted. (Today, the sisters have 20 snakes for their act: “They get paid with small rats and mice,” Neena laughs.)
A buzz had nevertheless generated around Hollywood about them, and wherever a television talk show featured twins as the day’s topic, Neena and Veena were the first booked.

The exposure paid off, and soon they were celebrities in their own right. “Neena and I paved the way for others a lot more than people imagine,” Veena says not so modestly.
On an ABC-Television show not so long ago, they were billed as the “Identical Twins Boa Constrictor Belly Dancers,” a tag that followed them for quite a while. But it was such a mouthful that they later shortened it to the “Belly Twins.” Like Madonna, Cher, Blondie and a handful of other performers, the twins also dropped their last name once their career began to flourish.

As belly dancers, they have danced at the American Music Awards with Aerosmith, were featured at Ozzie Osborne’s 50th birthday bash as well as Henry Winker’s birthday party, and did a performance at the wedding reception for Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. They have also appeared in a number of television shows, including “ER” and “The Bad and the Beautiful.” Individually, they have taken on guest star roles on several television shows, and one sister has often filled in at the last moment when the other has had to pull out of the show.

“So as time has gone by, people have gotten to know us as capable of other things,” Neena says.
Whenever they were not performing or making television appearances, the sisters fall back on supplementing their income through their Bollywood dance company, which they founded early in their career. A majority of their students are non-Indian, “and a lot of them are now instructors,” Neena adds.

Exercise Videos

Three years ago, in a move to capitalize on their exposure, they came out with an exercise video based on belly dancing moves, its success prompting them to release another one two years later. Since then, they have become something of a cottage industry. Two months ago, under the banner of Bellytwins International, Inc., they brought out their “Belly Dance Core Conditioning,” a 75-minute DVD that allows women to customize their own workout; and “Indi-Hop,” a dance style which they’ve trademarked. The second DVD is a 35-minute workout that mixes Indian dance with Hip-Hop “and is more or less a Bhangra exercise,” Neena explains.

Moreover, their book, “The Way of the Belly,” will soon hit the shelves in bookstores across the country. Featuring a 30-minute instructional DVD on belly dancing as well, the book’s eight chapters were alternately written by Neena and Veena, who discuss in their respective sections on how everything we experience originates in the abdomen--voice, digestion, emotions, even what we call “gut reaction” and “gut instinct.”
“And movement, too,” Veena says, “because when you feel something, your belly feels it and it inspires you to move.”
“It’s our philosophy of life from a belly dancer’s point of view, Neena chimes in. “And it also allows us to express other aspects of ourselves.”

Marketing the book and the DVDs has taken their career to a whole new level, one that they are enthusiastically embracing. “We want to go beyond Neena and Veena,” Neena says. “Our long-term goal is that we want to brand our company and make it all about the sensuality of women. We hope to become an empire, with our products.”
“We’re just going to let it flow to where it’s supposed to go. It may go in a different direction, but we’ll always work together,” Veena says. “Always.”