Shaking a leg with Shiamak Davar
- rediff.com
He dreamt of being an actor and singer but fate had other plans.
Shiamak Davar's tryst with dance began quite accidentally when his girlfriend bought him tickets to a dance show. His dancing moves did not go unnoticed by the people there. Encouraged by feedback, he decided to enter a dance competition. He won.
Shiamak then attended some dance workshops and got himself trained. Very soon, he started teaching others and from 11 students, the master choreographer now has almost 80,000 under his wing!
He has indeed come a long way - from performing in a programme (Body Soul to Soul) on Doordarshan Network to owning his very own dance institute (Shiamak Davar Institute for the Performing Arts) - the dance master now has 13 classes all over India, three in Canada and one in Australia.
Most of his dance moves are seen on the big screen courtesy the famous actors and actresses he has choreographed for. Some of the big names in Bollywood - Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan - have all learnt their dance steps from the master at some point of their careers.
In a telephonic chat with the dance master (he was in Vancouver for the opening his new dance academy), Patcy N got him to list some of the best dances he has choreographed so far.
Commonwealth Games 2006
This was a huge challenge, as there were about 450 dancers from my institutes, all over India. We practiced for a month. The entire troupe was disciplined so I did not have to scream at anyone. I treat even the small kids like adults.
We had Aishwarya Rai, Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukerji, Lara Dutta and Isha Sharvani for this dance. I also sang and danced with Sunidhi Chauhan, Shreya Ghosal and Sonu Nigam.
I had implemented various dances for our 11 minute performance. We had Kathak, modern dance besides folk dances like Chau to Jazz and Sufi music.
We had sportsmen like Mikha Singh, Sunil Gavaskar, PT Usha who were present at the event. It was a proud moment for me as I was representing my country. BBC radio even said that Australia should learn a lesson from India's 11-minute performance.
Dhoom 2
The title track of Dhoom 2 was very demanding. My dancers should get credit for that. Hrithik Roshan and the dancers practiced for 15 days. Hrithik is very hardworking, and an unbelievable dancer.
It was nice to choreograph Aishwarya Rai, as I know her personally (I had trained her for the Miss World contest). She knows my dancers very well and whenever she is in town, she calls them.
Actually, Aishwarya and Hrithik are the closest people attuned to my kind of dance.
