Blog Archive
October 18th, 2005 -
October 25th, 2005
High-Voltage Cheesiness
“The Merchants
of Bollywood” musical opened here in Melbourne early last week, and it
closes on Sunday, but a short review has only just appeared in
The Age. It’s not a rave review, but it’s not bad, either:
“The
Merchants of Bollywood”, a technicolour, high-energy song and dance show,
delivers exactly what you would want from anything Bollywood - high-voltage
cheesiness. The fast-paced dance sequences, showcasing exquisite costumes,
make the stage a riot of colours and sparkles, as the 30 dancers and actors
from Mumbai mime the lyrics of Bollywood cinema's classics and today's
thumping Bollywood beats.
October 25th,
2005
Australia Takes Its Turn Now
Trend spotter
Jinal Shah, writing at the
PSFK Global
Trends Collaborative website, discerns a new global trend – Bollywood
entering Australia.
She writes:
Just watched “Salaam
Namaste” this weekend - and was, for the first time, glad to not see any
more of Europe in a Bollywood movie. Big banner Bollywood movies are
notorious for shooting 'dream-sequences' in (mostly) Switzerland or London.
This movie - a drastic change from the usual Bollywood pattern - was shot
entirely on-location in Melbourne, Victoria.
Tourism Victoria,
welcomed Bollywood - this appeared in their March 2005 newsletter:
"With a growing
middle class, estimated to number between 50 million and 150 million, India
has significant potential as a tourism market for Victoria . There has been
steady growth in visitor numbers to Victoria over the past 10 years, with a
30 per cent increase last year and average annual growth of 18 per cent"
Bollywood has helped
boost tourism for many countries in the past-- Bollywood has also been wooed
by many countries in the past... Australia takes its turn now!
October 19th,
2005
A
Little Bit of Love, A Little Bit of Laughter
What do Australians need
to know about Bollywood? Between obscenities,
Vaibhavi
Merchant, head choreographer of “The Merchants of Bollywood” musical,
answers:
“India is
not Bollywood - Bollywood is part of India. It's the sort of people we are,
the energy we have, the colours that we bring into our everyday lives," she
says. "We call it masala - you know like the spices? A little bit of love, a
little bit of laughter, a song, a dance, some drama, some tears. It's
madness.
October 19th,
2005
Bollywood Dazzle
The “Merchants
of Bollywood” musical opens here in Melbourne tonight, and
Herald Sun reporter Catherine Lambert tried to inject some Bollywood
glitter into her preview:
 BOLLYWOOD
dazzle drips from every bangled wrist and taut torso as dancers explode to
the
Bombay beats.
New hit musical “The
Merchants of Bollywood” is a burst of energy and colour with more than 350
costumes designed by Falguni Thakore, a leading cinema designer….Thakore
designed the 350 costumes in the show that covers the Indian colour palette
from hot pink and turquoise to regal white and saffron yellow….."It has to
be a visual delight for the audience and the wealth of clothing
possibilities in this country is vast," she said.
Let’s hope the show is
as vibrant.
October 18th,
2005
The
Sensuality of Belly-Dancing with the Cool of Hip Hop
What happened when
freelance beauty writer
Carla Oates decided to learn
Bollywood dancing in Sydney? Well, first of all, she found she shouldn’t
have worn her “sequinned,
and very colourful ra-ra-style skirt”, as all the other participants were
dressed in tights and T-shirts. “Thankfully I left the bells at home,” she
says.
Not a great start,
but I comfort myself with the warm smiles from female punters, all of
varying ages and backgrounds (the teacher later says that there are often
males in the class too).
"We are going to be
doing a cheesy routine today," says our teacher Farah Shah. Excellent. Shah
doesn't waste any time and before you know it we're all sashaying down the
room. As I watch the teacher move through the routine, I decide that this
dance form is even more enticing than I had originally imagined. It blends
the sensuality of belly-dancing with the cool of hip hop, the joie de vivre
of salsa, and the drama of jazz ballet (and who doesn't love a well-executed
body roll?).
Shah later describes
Bollywood dance as modern Indian dance - a mix of classical Indian dance,
layered with jazz, funk, hip hop, Arabic, Latin and Spanish. She says, "it's
a fusion of all those styles".
Read the whole report.
Farah Shah teaches
Bollywood dancing at Mango Dance
Studio. In Melbourne the
Jhanak Dance Company teaches Bollywood dance.
October 18th,
2005
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