A 19th century fort, a five star palace, the desert, lost loves and my first 3 performances…..

“Ban Shubhangi, danseciyim”. Hi, I’m Shubhangi, I’m a dancer. I practice this introduction many times in my head. But when I do meet new people, I just say, “Ban Shubhangi, Hindistan liam”. I’m from India.

After a month of training in the luxurious prison of Gloria Resort in the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya, we finally left the place to join the dance troupe ‘Fire of Anatolia’ in Abu Dhabi on world tour.
We had 3 performances, the first in the traditional Al-Jahili fort in Al Ain, the other two in the opulent Emirates Palace hotel. It is difficult to sum up my experiences in Abu Dhabi in a coherent way. Memories of the relentless, burning sun in the Arab desert make my eyes water.

It is a wonder how such an artificial, concrete monster of a city can leave me with such tender moments. I sunk my fingers into the city like a fistful of sand, and lifted them to see moments slip away, like streams of sand escaping.
Moments where faith meant having the balls to sit in a car just after you’ve had a car crash. (Go right back on stage after you’ve goofed up royally to be exact.) When the pervert seemed endearing because he spoke your language. Moments when putting magenta eye shadow felt routine. When the world didn’t feel as big as you thought, people closer than you had imagined. When the taste of dates stuffed with orange rinds bring memories of your love’s skin.

In life we give undue eminence to all our first times. Like first pay cheque, first bike ride, first smoke, first kiss you mistook for love, first time you ate sushi, first time you went clubbing, first rains, first time your teacher said you wouldn’t go far in life, first time you wore a bikini, first adult film you saw, first time you stayed awake the whole night to see the sunrise blah blah blah..
I wonder why though. To me the second time is always more interesting. You’re not completely clueless. Yet you don’t know what to expect. My second performance in Abu Dhabi is probably the most memorable. I screwed up. Everyone noticed. And I got an ultimatum.

Since these were our first set of performances, most of us amateurs were given relatively simple roles on stage. As the biggest amateur around, I was assigned a handful of invisible appearances, beginning with Troy’s bazaar scene where we admire the market belly-dancers and greet the army. In my second scene, Helen is welcomed into the Trojan palace. While all the oriental dancers entertain her with their shimmies and gyrations, I stand in the absolute end and fan the royal couple with a palm leaf. The third scene is the closest to dancing I got. It is the scene where Hector bids goodbye to his wife Andromache. She pleads with him not to fight the invincible Achilles, favoured by the gods. And while the couple are torn between duty and longing, while the gods are busy mapping Troy’s defeat, while Achilles is somewhere losing his temper or sleeping with boys and Paris is frolicking with another mans wife; the sea, is glowing with phosphorescent waves.

And I am this minor detail. Rather I am the third row, 5th person in this minor detail. As part of the phosphorescent waves, I had to wear a glittering hat and gloves and poke my head and limbs out of a 10 meter long cloth.
It’s looks like a simple dance, and it is. I wasn’t nervous about it. However, 10 minutes before we were to go ‘live’, backstage mayhem ensued. Heads and limbs were poked into the wrong openings of the 10meter long cloth, when the curtains opened, I found myself to be the 1st, instead of 2nd dancer in 3rd row. This meant that I couldn’t look to my left and copy my neighbor’s steps. Now, everyone has their unique way of learning. When it comes to choreography, I just follow someone else. And I practice it so many times I can do it on autopilot at the same time. I wouldn’t call this cheating. It’s just mirroring.

So you can let your imagination go wild and visualize 5 dancers standing in the 3rd row, wearing a single piece of cloth, with one dancer out of sync. How I wished no one would notice me. The role of an extra is paradoxical. Your job is to create the backdrop yet remain invisible. How I wished to remain invisible when I left the stage. In the group meeting after the show, Mr. Erdogan, the godfather of the dance troupe, looked in my direction and made gestures of snipping me off with scissors. After the meeting, his words were translated from Turkish for my benefit. One more mistake, and I’d never perform with ‘Fire of Anatolia’ again.
When you give something your best, and fail, it doesn’t make sense. You feel cheated. You feel like someone has snipped your beautiful globe into a square. It doesn’t make sense.

The next performance was in less than 24 hours. If I were the author of a self-help book, I would’ve put the nonsense behind me and believed that everything teaches you something. I would’ve resolved to practice, redeem my name and come out stronger.
I sulked instead. I decided I didn’t have enough time to relearn the dance without looking. I decided to skip next day’s performance, instead focus on getting in right in Belgium, our next stop on the world tour. So it came as a shock when the next day, 4 hours before the performance, I was told that I couldn’t do that.

It was also the time I was introduced to rule no.2 by Muge, our fairy god-dancer. “If you can’t perform immediately after you screw up, you can never perform again. It’s like sitting in a car after a car crash.” She also explained that the dance troupe needs each one of us, and I would be letting my team down if I didn’t perform.
Before I went on stage, I feverishly searched for all our senior dance teachers, their feet in particular. I believe that nothing is possible without the blessings of your elders, especially your gurus. At home, I always touch my parent’s feet before a big day, as they are my teachers, my deities, my everything. I didn’t bother explaining to my Turkish teachers why I touched their feet to my forehead with this inexplicable reverence, but they seemed to get the drift. Oguzhan Hocam, perplexed, would say ‘Thank-you’ each time I touched his feet.

Muge made sure that we were all in the right place this time. I made sure I didn’t goof up. After the show, Mr.Erdogan looked at me and gave me the ‘soyle-boyle’ look. My performance was so-so this time. Not entirely there, but nothing blasphemous either.
I’m not mature enough to comment on faith. So I don’t know if faith could have pulled me through from performance no.2 to no.3, but I know rule no.2 did. If you can’t do it now, you never can.

Which brings me to rule no.1. And performance no.1. Muge, like Brad Pitt from ‘Fight Club’ introduces us to a new rule with each performance. Before our first performance, we all, the group of 13 international fellows were selected to perform the various dances we had been training on for a month. A few got to be in all, while the majority got probably one. Many fellows were disheartened. Ironically, the ones disheartened were also the ones in most dances. It seems they wanted to be in all. While people like me, who were just in 1 or 2 seemed to be fine with the idea. It’s difficult for an ambitious person to realize that you can’t do everything, you can’t be everywhere at once. Whereas slow learning, or being the wrong size makes you humble. It makes you count your opportunities, at times even appreciate the ten fingers you have intact to help you count.

Such insecurities and the Aladin inspired Al Jahili fort formed the perfect backdrop for rule no.1. Professionalism. You may be exhausted, you may be messed in the head, may feel wronged or suffering from loosies for that matter, but when you go on stage, you don’t let anything betray your state of mind. You perform your role the best you can, backstage too. You must keep the group spirit high.
A profound, yet simple insight. It seemed to fit in with the simple yet magical setting. Imagine a cardboard coloured fort constructed out of chubby 10 yr old’s imagination, come to life in a desert. That’s Al Jahili fort. It seems like a place Aladin’s flying carpet could crash into.

Our first audience looked like an endless row of symmetric black triangles from where I stood. A princess from some royal family decided to grace our show with her presence. As a result the entire show was turned into a female only show in minutes, as royal lasses can’t be seen enjoying dance musicals with strange men. According to some dancers there was a lady in the audience with moustache and beard inside her hijab. I wouldn’t know. I was too busy looking left and right to copy the steps.