I was born and raised in Bronx, NY, USA. Although I do not have Indian heritage, I absolutely love classic Indian movies, and the music and the dance. (And also movies, music and dance from other countries who follow what we in the west know as the "Bollywood" tradition, with song-and-dance sequences, etc.) I can buy Hindi and Urdu movies pretty easily (when I have money in my pocket), because I live in the right part of Queens, near Jackson Heights. South Indian movies (Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu...) are a bit harder to come by, but I sometimes like those even more. (And fortunately, there are some generous people out there who have been sending me things. For instance, MANY THANKS TO TOMMYDAN1 for sending me clips at my request. If you see videos uploaded here that you could have sworn you once saw at Tom's site, well, you are correct.)

My favorite dancer-actress came from Kerala; her name is Padmini. My favorite singer spent most of her years in Pakistan (except for a couple of decades before there was a Pakistan); her name is Noor Jehan.

Of course, I love other singers - Lata Mangeshkar, Geeta Dutt, Mohammed Rafi, P. Leela, Shamshad Begum, Rajkumari, Hemant Kumar, etc., and quite a few dancers - Ragini, Lalitha (all the Travancore Sisters were great!), Kamala Lakshman, Vyjayanthimala, Sai-Subbulaxmi, Gopi Krishna, Sandhya, Cuckoo, Rehana, Helen, Minoo Mumtaz.; and even actresses and actors who didn't dance as much - Ashok Kumar, Balraj Sahni, Meena Kumari, Nargis, Sivaji Ganesan, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor...

And quite a few music directors (favorite is Naushad).

But I'll stop there... If you look at my "Favorites" as well as the videos, you'll get a pretty good idea. You can also get a very good idea visiting my blog if you like (link below).