Many moons ago, a young man opened a dance school with seven students. Those were the days when contemporary dancing was seen in disreputable light — when short skirts and pumped up music where never objects of norm.
But the young man rubbished his critics and envisaged a future in the industry that was yet to mushroom with significance. In the year 2010, with a burgeoning cache of 13 dance centres in the country and a handful across Canada, Australia and Dubai, Shiamak Davar looks back at the nascent stage of contemporary dance and thanks his spiritual guru for setting him on the right track.
“I initially wanted to be an actor or a singer. But my guru, Khorshed Bhavnagari guided me in the right direction,” he says. “Though I believe as a dancer, I am still acting and performing. I don’t think I can separate them,” he adds.
The choreographer was in Bangalore promoting his Monsoon Mastic dance event among his students. “We had people from the ages eight to 84 taking part in the event,” says Shiamak at the show in Ambedkar Bhavan. “I love teaching children. If you can teach them, you can teach anyone,” he says with a smile.
The man who redefined Bollywood dancing with distinguishing ‘Shiamak’ steps calls his dance style, ‘a fusion and blend of old and new of the east and west.’ “That’s perhaps the best way to define it,” he says. But for now, he doesn’t have any new Bollywood project coming up — that’s because the man has immersed himself in finalizing the details of his collaboration with Debbie Allen, the American actress, dancer, choreographer and a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. “I’m really looking forward to doing shows with her,” says Shiamak.
Nevertheless his enthusiasm perceptibly drops as he talks about the industry mounting with copy-cats. “When I stepped into the industry, a lot of people tried stopping me. But people forgot that I had god on my side. Today, more than rivalry, there are people who wait to copy my dance and my costumes.
"These days, someone gets on a reality how and become a dancer-choreographer in a short time. What they are actually doing is fooling the public. I know what it is to be a choreographer — it takes at least eight years to be a good one,” says the man who started his dance school almost three decades ago.
He says it’s just dance that he is concerned about. “There were days when people used to look at girls who danced and say, ‘look at what they are wearing. Nobody will marry them.’ At least that has changed now,” he wraps up.
