It’s starting all over again now. After a seemingly endless dose of cricket that mercifully came to a rather eventful climax with controversy dogging its last staggering steps, it is now time for the television reality shows to start their new editions. American Idol is almost over, with just six people left to sing their way into an enviable contract and more promotion than they could ever expect otherwise. The Indian shows are airing promos between any other programming and even as you watch a soap or a crimi (which is what the one-corpse-is-never-enough-for-a-self-respecting-detective-to-figure-out serial would be aptly called in Germany) or even a food-based show, you are bombarded with bytes featuring popular faces wriggling various portions of their anatomy to garner votes and stay in the game. My favourites are the dance contests, from Zara Nachke Dikha to Nach Baliye to even the less polished Saas vs Bahu. Dance India Dance is just over and Indian Idol is just getting into the groove, which makes it all a lot of fun for a viewer like me who prefers these to the average soap and is always grumbling at the end of watchable dramas like Bones, Criminal Minds and, soon, it is rumoured, Psych.
But I have a reason to like these dance competitions on the boob tube. A very special reason that verges on the personal. Last year, as I contemplated the lack of any feasible employment that could be remotely interesting, I was offered a book project by Random House, Delhi. It was to present Bollywood dance to the layperson, with the peg of a reality show to hang the whole shebang on. And even though the remuneration was pathetic and the entire deal not really worth the travel hassles I would need to go through, it would be fun, I knew, and a very charming editor at the publishing house completely sold me on it. So between her niceness and my interest and involvement with dance, any kind of dance, I decided I would do it. And it was perhaps the most fun I have had in a long time.
I have written about this before, but perhaps without too many specifics. It was not the time to talk about it then and I really did not want to, except that I was pretty excited about meeting some really fun people, some of them regrettably only over the phone. I enjoyed talking to most of them and got a little annoyed at those who acted pricey and refused to call back or even accept my calls. But on the whole it was a very positive experience, with many talking far longer than I needed, some keeping in touch even today, many months after I have done with the project and wait for it to be published. The show concept was fairly simple – a group of celebrities were trained to dance by a matching set of choreographers and judged for their dancing abilities, their charisma, their growth as dancers and their hunger to do more.
I started with the easiest part of the assignment: meeting the celebrities at a rehearsal. It took me a long drive to get there. And once I did, I needed to sort out faces and foibles as I tried to get the information I needed out of their tired heads. My first glimpse was promising. They sat in an exhausted pile of people in a cushioned corner of a room but greeted me with friendly waves and smiles – after all, this was publicity, right! I spoke to quite a few of them at the venue, saving the rest for later via telephone. There was my favourite, Hard Kaur, rapper and musician, who told me about her life in England, her current love and her relationship with her mother. There was her choreographer, Savio, a smiling gentleman who knew exactly what he had to do to challenge his student to give her best. There was soap star hunk Karan Singh Grover, his young trainer Nicole and their youthful banter; a few months later, when I told a class of would-be journalists that I had met him and, orchestrated by a collective feminine sigh, that I had spoken to him for a while, they clamoured for his phone number and wanted to know more about him than about how to write for a magazine!
And there were lots more. But if I told you all about it now, there would be nothing left for my next blog!
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