{"id":5305,"date":"2016-02-05T19:52:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T14:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/?p=5305"},"modified":"2025-10-24T14:20:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:50:59","slug":"rendezvous-with-haleem-khan-on-impersonating-women-dancing-fighting-stigma-and-pursuing-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/rendezvous-with-haleem-khan-on-impersonating-women-dancing-fighting-stigma-and-pursuing-dreams.html","title":{"rendered":"[Rendezvous With Haleem Khan]: On Impersonating Women, Dancing, Fighting Stigma and Pursuing Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man impersonating a woman; what an outrageous act \u2014 or even a\u00a0thought \u2014 that is. This is how our feeble minds\u00a0rush to form an opinion without thinking\u00a0even twice about something. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But then there are always\u00a0the non-conformists, the mavericks, \u00a0who challenge the status quo and create their own path for others to follow.<\/p>\n<p>This is the inspirational story of Haleem Khan. An established classical Kuchipudi\u00a0dancer, who, for a large part of his life, has fought the mental stigma associated with impersonating women and pursuing his dreams and passion, of dancing, and to take the legacy of such classical and revered art form forward.<\/p>\n<p>Haleem confided in himself and didn&#8217;t share about his passions even with his family and friends as he knew what their reaction would be.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When his family finally did come to know about his dancing through the media, they\u00a0were extremely shocked. Undeterred, Haleem continued pursuing his passion and today is one of the most celebrated figures in this genre of dance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We at YourDOST brings to you Haleem&#8217;s inspiring story. We had the chance to interview him and this is what he has to say about his struggles\u00a0and his passion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><center><iframe data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hoEyLOQI7_8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>His advice to the people:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h2><em>Don&#8217;t confuse interest with passion. But if you are really positive and passionate about something, just go ahead and do it.<\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A man impersonating a woman; what an outrageous act \u2014 or even a\u00a0thought \u2014 that is. This is how our feeble minds\u00a0rush to form an opinion without thinking\u00a0even twice about something. \u00a0 But then there are always\u00a0the non-conformists, the mavericks, \u00a0who challenge the status quo and create their own path for others to follow. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37394,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions\/37394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}