Zindagi through dance

An amalgamation of dance, drama, and Bollywood, Zindagi —Tales of Bollywood, will take you on a journey unlike any other. Created by Indo-Belgian production BeMad, this dance-drama is a mix of Indian classical dance, Bollywood and bits of international styles.

The play is a love story between Raj, a human, and Maneka, an immortal princess who flew down from heaven, who face certain challenges on the way to their happy ending. Explaining the idea behind the story, director and choreographer Mohit Mathur says, “The whole idea started from how we have saat pheras, seven promises that we have in love stories, that we promise each other for seven lives, that’s how the idea of Zindagi started.”

The production is not as simple as it looks because Mohit didn’t want it to be like a normal play. It is heavy on dance, which depicts the main part of the story, and Mohit and his team of 20 dancers have packed in as many styles as possible.

“We have different kinds of dance forms, from Indian classical dance forms like Kathak to garba. We have bhangra, we have South Indian Tollywood, we have tried to incorporate the whole spectrum of dance in terms of folk and Bollywood, and we have also incorporated styles like contemporary and waltz so that we have something for foreign audiences as well,” he reveals.

Mohit adds that he wanted the piece to be emotionally hard-hitting and intense, and has incorporated stories inspired by Bollywood. He says, “There are six different acts. Wen I conceptualized the thing, I had this idea of giving experiences to the audience. There are stories like Don, there are stories like Lagaan; each story should make them feel a special feeling.”

And not just the stories, Mohit says that the songs will also give the audience a nostalgic feeling about some iconic Bollywood films. “The audience should get scared when a dance like Khali Bali happens, they should have that ‘aww’ feeling during a song like Ladki Bheegi Bhaagi Si, their sensual side should come out when a song like Haye Rama plays. We have tried to incorporate all those elements and make sure they come out,” he explains.

The performance is 75% dance and the rest is drama, but not the usual sight in a theatre: Mohit wanted a way to narrate the story in a non-traditional manner. “Normally, you have a guy who comes and he talks about what’s happening. But we haven’t created that; we have kept a screen. There is a story underway on the screen, and the screen is taking the story forward,” says Mohit who is also the lead actor for the on-screen portion, directed by Akarsh Khurana.

Since Akarsh’s wife Dilshad Edibam Khurana wrote the play, he was already in the know about the production when Mohit asked him to come on board. “A month ago Mohit called me and asked me to see the rehearsal of the play, and all the stuff they had done was quite fantastic,” the director says.

“At that point of time, he discussed the idea of shooting the scenes and actually play them out on screens instead of acting the scenes out on stage. I felt it was an interesting idea, it was an interesting take on juggling both mediums — performance as well as something on the screen,” he adds.

The director then put together a team of actors and shot the individual scenes in a single take so as to preserve the vibe of a traditional theater. Since most of the screen part narrates the story going on in heaven, the production went with green screen to score some beautiful backdrops.

With a total of an hour and 15 minutes of dance and half an hour of screen time, the dance drama which was planned just over a month ago, is all set to be previewed at a special screening before it takes on the world stage.