… final Nrityageet dance show to be held May 3-4 at NCC

By Elvin Carl Croker

AFTER 40 years of continued success, one of Guyana’s longest- running dance shows, “Nrityageet,” will be hosted for the final time on May 2-3 at the National Cultural Centre. “Nrityageet” — which means “pure song and dance” in Hindi — is a dance production by the Shaw family which has been gracing the stage since 1979.

The debut performance 40 years ago on the Queen’s College stage, which was at that time the popular hot spot for such activities, was described as a ‘hit’ and a springboard for the other shows. This show drew much media attention and got major inputs from the Indian Cultural Centre dance teachers.

Diversity challenges
Dr. Seeta Shah Roath, the eldest of the Shaw siblings, said the decision to “close up shop” on four decades of hard work in dance stemmed from various challenges. One such challenge included issues surrounding the diversity of the show. “I was offered six million dollars at one time to not have non-Indians on the show. I said ‘I’m sorry, that’s not us and there is no way we could do that, so keep your money,’” she said.

She said that the Indian Cultural Centre was more diverse in the earlier years, in that they used to have a lot of different dancers from various ethnic groups, noting that Andre Subryan was one of them.

“Mandirs were being told not to attend Nrityageet because we had such a diverse stage of not only dancers,but dance styles and so on; people prefer Bollywood, they preferred filmy dances and they prefer it to be pure, pure Indian,” she said.

She noted that the show suffered a lack of support by most Indian communities over the recent years because of this.

Other matters
She further related that other companies offered to fund the show if it goes to the fairground, something she did not agree with, noting that the show is ‘dance theatre’ and being a lover of the arts, she felt that would be dropping the standards of the show; “I think we are going out maintaining our standards as dance theatre’ and I will continue to teach,” she said.

The organiser stated that being able to keep young dancers interested in the production, in rehearsals, in learning more and more, also contributed to the challenges of the show.

“These are young people at the age of puberty or just past puberty and they want to have boyfriends and some get married and their male counterparts wouldn’t want them to dance anymore,” she said.

In the beginning
Relating the genesis of Nrityageet, Seeta said she was only 23 and had just given birth to her beautiful daughter Suzan, when she joined the rest of her family and stepped on the Queen’s College stage in the first dance performance.

She said Nrityageet is the brainchild of her sister Nadira; a concept she birthed after a dance performance in Trinidad and Tobago at the University of the West Indies (UWI) on the occasion of its Indian immigration celebration and conference that year.

“She danced the Kathak solo and everybody thought it was fantastic. They couldn’t believe that she was from the Caribbean; they thought she was actually from a Kendra in India. When she told them that she had learned everything right at the Indian Cultural Centre in Guyana, they were amazed.”

This overwhelming response, coupled with the fact that her father Cyril Shaw was a show business promoter in Guyana for a very long time, sparked her inspiration to form the group.

Seeta said that her mother was a great inspiration to the shows from day one, creating all the costumes for many years.

She said her first dance production was at 13 years old at the Kitty College, which is long before the Nrityageet production started. Her sister, Nadira, was about eight years old at the time: “I used her in my productions, because I was a ballet dancer,” she said. At that age, she said she had a ballroom dance choreography, a ballet dance choreography and an Indian dance choreography.

She said the show started the same year that Eze Rockcliffe started his band, the Yoruba Singers. “We both started at the same show at the same time and I was doing ‘plight of the right,’ one of Francis Quamina Farrier’s plays, so it was an all-round theatrical experience,” she said. This was the background that was bought to Nrityageet’s diversity in dance styles.

Seeta said she mostly played a behind-the-scenes role at first, writing, researching, helping to design costumes, doing the props, sets and so on.
“I also brought the theatre arts in terms of light, sound, stage, backdrops and ensuring that every dance was set into a different scenario, a different setting and the dramatic aspect. So Nrityageet had the challenge of bringing that respect to the dance form,” she said.

Seeta expressed gratitude for the sponsorship that the show has received over its lifespan; sponsors include Guyana Airways, BWIA, Demerara Distillers Ltd., GT&T, Fogarty’s, Beepat’s, Kirpalani’s, Banks DIH, and many more.

She also expressed gratitude to the National Dance Company and some of the teachers of The National School of Dance who danced Kathak with them and who were taught by Phillip McClintock.

Phillip McClintock was a student of the Indian Cultural Centre and had completed a dance scholarship in India. He also became the director of the National School of Dance. He died in 1986. He and Nadira were dance partners on many different national shows. He was thought to be the only Guyanese who could equal Nadira in Kathak dance and they did well together.

Nrityageet received the Group Award for Guyana’s National Award, the Medal of Service, for ”Sustained and Outstanding Contributions to the Cultural Mosaic of Guyana” and has also been repeatedly awarded “Best Dance Production,” “Best Costumes” and “Best Set” by the Guyana Theatre Arts Awards and the Madame Iffel Award of Barbados.

Nrityageet also received a special award by the Theatre Arts Awards for 21 years of “Exceptional Diligence in the Pursuit of Excellence”; and by the New York group of Guyanese for “Long and Sustained Dance Productions of Excellence.” Nrityageet also received the “Icon of the Arts” award from the Theatre Guild of Guyana.

“We had proved ourselves to be a Dance Theatre show with full dance dramas, classical and folk dances of International standard, and we were a diverse production in dance styles, as well as a Guyanese multi-ethnic composition of dancers doing Kathak and Indian folk. I think we are going out maintaining our standards as dance theatre. I will continue to teach and I am hoping that people come to love the theatre arts and the theatre arts production the way we do,” Seeta said

She said the dance group is extremely proud of its high standards over the years and she believes more should be done to produce the kind of support that they need for theatre arts production to thrive in Guyana.

The grand farewell show is set for May 3 and 4 at the National Cultural Centre at the NCC.