A hundred and fifty dancers, in five batches of 30 each, were gyrating to the song ‘Aaisee raju duniya…' at the waterfront grounds in Sacred Heart College, Thevara, while the AXN Amazing Race crew filmed them, a few days ago. Among the group were the contestants of the mother of all reality shows, dancing to this Bollywood number, with the group. It was part of the tough contest, for they had to learn it all and do it with pass marks, all in a few hours.
Amazing feat
Dancer Imthiyaz Abubacker, 29, of Kochi, had got together this group of 150 dancers at short notice and taught them the dance, all within three days, which by itself was an amazing feat. Tougher for him was the proposition of teaching the 10 contestants (five teams) from all over the world the Bollywood dance steps! Marrying speed with perfection was indeed a tall task.
A secret
“As it is all a big secret, no one is actually told what the contest would be. I was told in instalments. We were even misled, so that the real thing came out like a bolt from the blue, to the contestants. I just had a day to select 150 good dancers. Within a day, I got them from all over Kerala. Then they gave me the song for the dance which I had to teach, then came the contestants…” says Imthiyaz. The dancers had to be ready at 1 a.m., all dressed up, ready with the dance! Helping him do all this were Remya, Ayyappadas, Manoj.
But Imthiyaz' moment of fame is not this episode. Six years ago, Imthiyaz was the only dancer selected from Kerala for the famed ‘Bharathi the Show', an international dance production touring the world still. “Actually, I was a dance coordinator and brought hundreds of dancers for the audition here for Gashash Deshe's ‘Bharathi The Show'. But selectors Jojo Khan, Saroj Khan's assistant and the others were not satisfied with any one. When they were about to leave, without having selected anyone, they asked me to show them some steps. The next thing I hear is the phone call telling somebody that a boy called Imthiyaz has been selected from Kerala. My life changed after that,” he simply states.
With his widowed mother running the family with her tailoring outfit, life had been tough. But Imthiyaz had got into the group that danced on famed stages the world over, in Israel, Paris, London, Toronto, Austria, Morocco, Spain, Russia….The two-and-a-half hour show with 120 musicians, acrobats and singers has Bhavna Pani (who acted in Priyadarshan's ‘Vettam') playing the role of Bharathi. There are 100 dancers in the show. It's a contemporary show with India's rich diversity pronounced. Bollywood, classical and folk school of dance pervade throughout, with most Indian languages represented in the lyrics. The dancers are from all over the country. “The experience I got is invaluable. All of us therefore, picked up many languages, Indian and foreign, like French,” says Imthiyaz.
“Some leave and new dancers are brought in and trained. Now there are two more Keralites.” When he comes home on holidays, he teaches in his dance school in Thoppumpady and also goes out for programmes. Imthiyaz is an incurable choreographer, one might say, for if he is not choreographing, he feels incomplete.
Finger dancing
In the last two years, finger dancing has been his hobby. “I was inspired by the movie ‘Psycho' and got a whole dance drama choreographed.” It's actually at his fingertips. Remya, who runs the dance school with Imthiyaz, is also in the finger dancing group, which is getting bigger. They wear gloves, on which characters are painted and after the first few seconds, you don't remember the fingers, only the characters move to music. ‘Bharatheeyam' tells the story of the freedom struggle and ‘Keraleeyam' about Onam and our arts.
Imthiyaz is a man in a hurry. Before he leaves for the next season of ‘Bharathi The Show', he has to leave his imprint on his dance school and the finger puppet project. And he has to give his mother a better life, buy a house…but first, dance, dance and dance....
