Shobana does not suffer fools gladly. And nor should she; the 200-odd film veteran has worked on projects ranging from Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Kannada to English. She has entranced audiences with classic moves — literally: she is a Bharatanatyam dancer with a dance school, Kalarpana Institute in Chennai, under her tutelage.
She is used to a viewership familiar with her oeuvre.
The winner of the Padma Shri award — India’s fourth highest civilian honour, which she received for her contributions to cinema and Bharatanatyam — therefore seems to find questions of audience expectations odd.
In a brisk, not unkind tone, in an interview with tabloid! ahead of her show, The Spirit of Dance, at Shaikh Rashid Auditorium today she mulls the question for a while.
“Depends on what the audience wants,” she finally says over a spotty line. “An audience comes for my show — for the last so many years [expecting] there’s some kind of quality.”
Shobana explains patiently that although it’s a classical show, the presentation is going to be entertaining. “I don’t think people want a theme-based programme, they just want a fantastic programme,” she says.
“We are going to be presenting classical music in its best avatar and we will showcase mythology, we will showcase a part of Krishna, our musical, which was a big hit,” she adds.
“Spirit of Dance is a generic name that we have, because we are doing drama, we are doing pieces to music that [are]not in our texts. We are doing western classical music, then we are also presenting some Sufi, so we are having a lot of fun. So that is the Spirit of Dance for us.”
And that spirit of having fun — on stage, while practising — is partly what the 47-year-old fresh-faced artist says keeps her young. “I constantly move with music, and I move with people who are very young, and I exercise,” she says. Well that, and keeping away from negative topics, she says, alluding to an earlier question about the casting couch in the showbiz industry.
She vehemently denies ever having faced a backlash for simply being a woman and sticks with her good-experience narrative.
Perhaps she is saving her anecdotes for her book. She is working on a memoir, she says, which she plans to start writing in March, or April of next year. And in the meantime she’s pitching her thesis — on dance, of course — to various educational institutes. And when she’s not thinking about her intellectual pursuits, she is preparing for four shows “that’s also a lot of bodywork”, she says.
Asked about her acting and which medium of communication she prefers, Shobana is quick to shoot down any comparatives. “They are not complementary. The only thing common is they are both means of communication and they are very, very dissimilar. Even the dances that you do in film — though you say it’s [a dance] in film, though you say it’s classical, it is very differently conceived; it is very visual.
“For me, I love to act too and I love to perform too, but for me in a [classical] dance performance I’m allowed more freedom. So what the audience sees is totally mine. Whereas in a film it is teamwork.”
‘Work on yourself’
Her reverential attitude towards work and dance is apparent. And it’s a lesson she offers younger artists looking for a place in the spotlight, too. “I do realise that the generations have changed; everyone is into a lot of social media,” she explains. And it is important to put yourself out there — in the public’s eye line. But you need to focus on your own artistry and the rest will follow, she says.
Wise words from a teacher who doesn’t suffer fools.
Don’t miss it!
The Spirit of Dance will be staged tonight at Shaikh Rashid Auditorium — Indian High School, Oud Metha. Gates open at 7pm. Tickets start at Dh75.
