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ShareMumbai: Widely acknowledged as the guru of contemporary Indian dance, and proud founder of the largest chain of dance schools in the country, Shiamak Davar appears to have it all, on the surface. But dig deeper and you discover an unfulfilled dream, finds DNA, who met the dance magnate in his office.
He may have spent a lifetime cavorting with the glamourous elite of Bollywood, but Shiamak Davar's studio frontage is decidedly unglamourous. Tucked away under the Mahalaxmi bridge in a narrow, muddy lane, it looks like another godown in a long row of grimy, unmarked, windowless warehouses. The warehouses belong to Mumbai's top book distributors, and the several auto-repair outlets that seem to have colonised this area. Nestling between stockpiles of new books and stockpiles of new car parts is the studio and office where the guru of contemporary Indian dance sits, dances and does business.
Stepping inside, you find yourself at the corner of a huge, rectangular hall. The flooring is smooth, shining parquetry. The walls are decorated with trophies, certificates, and figurines in various poses of modern dance. One entire wall is an end-to-end mirror. I deduce, correctly, that the mirrors are there not for some orgy of narcissists, but to enable immediate evaluation and correction of dance postures and steps. High on the walls, where you can't reach them, are photographs of Shiamak with every Bollywood star you can think of -- from Shah Rukh to Hrithik to Shahid Kapoor, Preity Zinta and many more, indicating that he's been around for a long time.
At the far end of the room, on what seems to be an abandoned workstation lies a glass butterfly. Above the butterfly, on the wall, is a poster of Shiamak adrift in the air, his knees bent, arms raised, rendering so perfectly the shape of a butterfly, that for a moment you think, if the soul of a butterfly were to enter the human body, this is how it would look.
Of angels, souls and God
Speaking of souls, Shiamak, 48, is a firm believer in the spirit world. On his desk are two very, very fat volumes -- in Braille -- of a book called The Laws Of The Spirit World by Khorshed Bhavnagri, his "guru of 28 years". The first thing he does when we meet is to hand me a copy of the book (not the Braille one) and extract a promise from me that I'll read it.
He starts talking about his guru. "I always knew that there was more to life besides eating, making love, and going to work," he explains. "And when I met her -- I was 20 then -- my whole life just opened up in front of me. I learnt from her about life after death, about the soul. I do believe in life after death, you know, I do believe in angels, I do believe in God."
He has a habit of pushing his hair back as he talks. He appears different from what you see on TV; he's bigger, taller, and not so thin. He looks like what Andy Garcia may have looked like if he'd been born in a Parsi family.
Bringing Jazz to Bollywood
From the world of angels and God, I nudge him in the direction of something more earthly -- his career in dance. "People say I am the guru of contemporary and modern dance in India because I changed the genre of movement and the whole choreography scene -- be it the costumes, the set, the styling, and even the bodies of my dancers. I made people realise that dancing can also be this way."
Modesty is a rare trait in Bollywood and evidently Shiamak doesn't suffer from that weakness. Besides, he has every reason to rest easy about it, for he is an immensely successful man. As a dancer and choreographer, he is widely acknowledged as the pioneer of the Jazz movement in India who has spawned innumerable imitators; he is credited with introducing Bollywood to modern dance through his choreography in films such as Dil To Pagal Hai, Taal, and more recently, Dhoom 2 and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
As a dance teacher, he runs more schools than anyone else in India, with around 100 centres across the country. As a businessman, his dance-based commercial empire traverses continents and sectors. As a choreographer, he has designed shows for events such as the IIFA Awards, the World Economic Forum, the Opening and Closing Ceremony of the Asian Games (1989), and the IPL closing ceremony in South Africa this year. He has made inroads into the television domain as well, with Jhalak Dikhla Ja (JDJ).
The dancer and his demons
And yet, for all his success, and his professed spiritual connectivity, Shiamak comes across as a profoundly restless man, as someone who, deep within, isn't really impressed by all his achievements. And his sense of being unfulfilled comes to the surface when he talks about his youth, a time when he was hailed more for his acting and singing ability than even for his dancing.
And then you realise what's eating him up from inside. In a country, and in an industry that doesn't really care a hoot for male dancers or choreographers, the big game in town -- the biggest game in town -- is to make the cut as a Bollywood hero. Who gives a damn how well you can dance? Can you dance AND act? That's what matters.
For 25 years, Shiamak has believed, and known, that he can act -- he has proved it time and again on stage, most memorably in Alyque Padamsee's Evita. "People who've seen me in my musicals realise that, my God, he can act as well. But only the theatre circles know this." Yet, in all these years, for all his proximity to Bollywood, Shiamak hasn't managed to break into acting. Till date, he has acted in all of one film, Little Zizou (2009), and take a guess what role he got. He got to play Shiamak Davar.
