Belly Dancing at India Restaurant in Providence, RI

With the cold, long winter coming to an end, Matt and I are finally ready to poke our heads out of our season-long hibernation. After being cooped up so long, we were eager to try something fun and a little different. India has always had a great reputation as a foodie’s paradise and, bonus, they offer live entertainment a few nights a week. This sounded like the perfect place to kick off our return to life outside of the house. So here’s how our experience with Belly Dancing at India Restaurant in Providence, RI went…

Let’s Start with the Belly Dancing

This is going to be a two part post, one post will cover the belly dancing at India, the second will be a dining review. Our main reason for going to India Restaurant was to catch the belly dancing show, so let’s jump into that first.

Every Friday and Saturday night, India puts on a belly dancing performance featuring three beautiful ladies. The shows starts around 7 PM and reservations are highly recommended.

Early Reservations

Fearing we were going to get bad seating and not be able to see the dancers, we made our reservations for 6 PM to beat anyone else going for the same reasons. Well it turned out that there really isn’t any bad seating, so our fears were a bit unfounded.

We did run into one problem from getting there so early though, we ended up ordering and finishing our meals even before the dancers came out. We wound up nursing a drink and picking at the remnants of our dinner – even though we were stuffed – just so we could stay at our table longer. I’d say making a reservation for 6:30 PM is a safe bet. If you need to kill some time beforehand, check out my list of free things to do in Providence.

Shh the Show is Starting

The start time of 7 PM is a rough estimate, the first dancer came out around 7:15. She was dressed in beautiful, traditional garb. The lights lowered and Indian music was pumped throughout the room.

With a smile plastered across her face, she took to the center of the room and danced her way over to the largest open space in the restaurant. Fortunately for us, that area was directly behind our table – we got a front row seat! For the most part she stayed in this one area, as the rest of the restaurant was probably a little too cramped to accommodate the spinning and flourishing.

The show lasted around 5 minutes, filled with the ringing hand chimes and gossamer twirls that you’d expect from a belly dancing show. Here’s a short clip I took:

According to their website, they actually have 3 performances throughout the night. We left shortly after the first one, but I would guess the other performances are spaced throughout the night for all the patrons to enjoy.

I had such a fun time and I really recommend checking it out if you can. They have a bar as well if you don’t want the expense of a meal – pop in, grab a beer and watch the show!

Other Events at India

In addition to the belly dancing, they also do free henna tattoos occasionally on Friday and Saturday evenings. On Thursday nights, they have “Indian Classical Night”  from 6 – 9 PM featuring traditional Pakistani and Indian music. I’ve heard great things about the live music performance and I’m excited to check it out one day soon.

I also came across a sign touting a “Half-off Tuesdays” deal where entrees are half off after 4 PM on Tuesdays. It’s not an entertainment event, but that is a pretty good deal.

Continue reading part 2: the dining review of India Restaurant