A Glimpse into the Creation of Bollywood Enchanted - an Original Taare Production!

Taare recently showcased their theatre production titled Bollywood Enchanted at the Artscape Theatre – a love story told through dance, music, theatrics and visual works! 

It’s no secret that Cultsha Kennis always runs to the front row of the theatre in Cape Town, and we simply had to get a glimpse into the creation of this show!

See a conversation below with Ahneesh Valodia, the founder and artistic director of Taare:   

Cultsha Kennis: Taare has been featured in multiple Artscape Theatre festivals over the last few years. Tell us about how your collaboration got started. 

Ahneesh: Our very first production at Artscape was self-funded. Our dancers had worked hard to raise funds in order to stage a production at the prestigious venue. Thereafter, we approached Artscape to collaborate with us for a second production. We had a desire to contribute to the greater community through dance and more specifically use dance as a medium to contribute to those affected with Muscular Dystrophy - a cause close to home for us. This gave rise to the underlying concept of Rivers of Emotion and also saw the beginning of our harmonious relationship that we now have with the theatre. 

Aarya's fairygod mother

Cultsha Kennis: How did you come up with the idea for a Cinderella themed show? 

Ahneesh: Cinderella has always been an adored fairytale. With a dream to eventually present a more theatrical dance production, I had a closer look at the tale and saw that there was great scope to tell the story through Bollywood song and dance. After four productions that were centered around pure dance, namely Dance through Bollywood, Rhythm India, Rivers of Emotion and Live Love Bollywood, I craved a creative challenge and given Taare's journey, this would be an ideal time to stage and choreograph a concept that I had on the back burner for years.

Cultsha Kennis: The collaborations with the different dance groups were quite unique! From a music and dance perspective, how do you incorporate genres like Hip-hop and Ballroom into a Bollywood show? 

Life in the village market

Ahneesh: Music selection is an integral part to a Taare production. Given the language barrier of lyrics, the music and arrangement itself needs to be accessible to not only Bollywood fans, but to anyone with an appreciation of the performing arts. Through the music, they need to be able to feel the emotion portrayed or understand the scene being told. This combined with a vision to bring diverse people together through dance and collaboration – in all our productions – specific songs were selected that would aid both the story-telling as well as provide a canvas for our guest choreographers to remain true to their respective styles. After a lengthy song selection, the process of collaborating in the rehearsal room became a seamless one. The selection of styles also played a role in further depicting the characters and their scenes. For example, Hip-hop was used to demonstrate that the Prince grew up in the West; Ballroom was used to add an element of romance between the Prince and Cinderella; Belly dance was used to depict a stepsister attempting to seduce the Prince; and Contemporary was selected to present a soulful and emotive piece of Cinderella's pining and despair.

The charming bachelor arrives in India!

Cultsha Kennis: The Bollywood Enchanted show has enjoyed three full houses at the Artscape Theatre. What an achievement! Tell us the secret of how Taare draws its audience. 

Ahneesh: Full scale Bollywood dance productions are rare in Cape Town. With a smaller Indian population than Durban and Johannesburg, there is not always much on offer in terms of Indian dance entertainment. Taare also was a founded in an extremely supportive community, one that prides itself on promoting culture through the performing arts - in line with Taare's mission and thus we are afforded great support. We also make every effort to ensure that our productions are filled with diversity and variety with something for everyone. While our main genre is Bollywood, we incorporate cultural elements from across the globe to produce work that can be appreciated and accessed by diverse audiences. Bollywood Enchanted was the first time we performed three runs of a production. In the past, we've only done two runs per show. Together with this show being a unique concept and previous productions being well received, our dream of filling three houses thankfully materialised. 

Aarya and Kabir fall in love on the dance floor

Cultsha Kennis: The scene where Ariya transforms from her rags to her ballgown is fascinating! How was that accomplished? 

Ahneesh: This was inspired by work we saw online during our research phase. The instant transformation of rags to a beautiful dress is a magical feat in the animation and in the various Cinderella films. We were quite fascinated with the idea of it happening live right in front of our audiences. We studied the samples that we found online and created a version of our own with our dressmaker. The exact engineering of our custom-made version will need to remain our secret!

Cultsha Kennis: Are you planning the next production already? 

Ahneesh: You'll need to watch the space!

Aarya's evil stepmother and stepmothers try and outshine her

***Do you want to see Taare perform live? Come and watch them at the upcoming Diwali festival at the V&A Waterfront Amphitheatre - Sunday 25 November from 14.30 onward! 

Read more on the history of Taare on a previous Cultsha Kennis blog-post: 

http://cultshakennis10.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-taare-tale-bringing-bollywood-dance.html