Rippling Echoes

By Ajay Pamneja.

The Grand Finale to Tongues On Fire 2002

This was an onslaught of extremely colourful and vibrant costumes from the Indian sub-continent with some extremely talented dancers on an unsuspecting audience. The publicity for the show had given nothing away. I went in expecting a short fashion show with some speeches and maybe some singing/dancing with some clips from the films shown as part of the just concluded film festival.  The event was choreographed by the West London based Pali Chandra, who runs her own dance academy teaching Indian classical and contemporary dance forms.

Instead, I was presented with an extremely well choreographed array of film clips and dance sequences ranging from the pre-Mughal-E-Azam days (i.e Black and White cinema) to current day Bollywood. The order of the clips and the associated dance sequences left no doubt in my mind that Indian cinema had so much colour and vibrant dance and motion sequences to offer which no other cinema in the world can compete with. In these times of worldwide Bollywood recognition, this was an absolutely perfect example to display that rainbow of talent and techniques. We were always reminded of the sub-continent influence by the compere Salim Asif (of Jung newspaper), who had the very sub-continent lilt to his presentation style - never getting excited by any of the performers - a regular pitched tone throughout the show.

The evening started off with a bang with a performance by the remarkable trio of Leylah, Vipul and Samir who form the Dil-Se dance group. They gave an absolutely mesmerising performance, choreographed by themselves, based on clips from the music of the forthcoming film, much-hyped DEVDAS. This very energetic and beautifully costumed performance set the mood for the evening. The rest of the evening constituted dances from the very wonderful TMC dance troupe and dancers from Pali Chandra's own dance academy. Each and every dancer was well aware of their audience and also appeared to be enjoying the performances. The music ranged from Pakeezah to Mugale-E-Azam to Umrao Jaan to Dil To Paagal Hai and current day favourites like Kaho Naa Pyar Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. There were also beautiful tributes in between to the likes of Noor Jehan and Zeenat Aman. The underlying theme was their contribution to the Bollywood fashion and acting trends.

The evening ended with some short speeches by Pali Chandra, Bollywood's own Sahil Khan (of Style) and the Tongues On Fire festival organisiing force - the duo of Pushpinder Chowdhry and Harvinder Nath.

There is so much dance talent in this country that Bollywood need not bring any of their own dancers anymore when they shoot another film in this country or perform on a stage here.