Czech-Nepalese dancer takes Bollywood to Prague
(No Ratings Yet)As posters in Prague announce a Hindi film festival in October, Czech-Nepalese artist Sangita Shresthova’s effort to take Bollywood to Hungary waltzes into its third successful year.
“The background of Bollywood dances is very interesting,” Shresthova told reporters during a visit to Nepal to make a documentary film. “Many actresses in the 1950s and 1960s had dance backgrounds, like Waheeda Rehman and Vyjayanthimala,” she added.
Started in 2004, the Bollywood fest will turn three in Prague when it is held Oct 9-15.
Born of a Nepali father and Czech mother, Shresthova spent her teenage years in Kathmandu, where she learnt classical Indian dances. In 1997, she went to India to learn the classical Bharatanatyam dance, as also kalari payatu, Kerala’s traditional martial art.
It was then that she came under the spell of Bollywood. She witnessed artistes struggling to sell tickets when performing classical Indian dances. But if it was a Bollywood dance show, the event was a sell-out.
This whetted her interest in Bollywood films.
After completing her masters from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where dance was her major subject, she is now doing her PhD from the University of California Los Angeles on changing relations between Indian film dances and dance traditions.
But her passion for Bollywood is not just confined to academics. Two years ago, she and her friends, including a Czech filmmaker and a scholar at Prague’s Charles University, were lamenting the lack of Bollywood films in that country. That was when they organised a festival.
Though Prague has a tiny Indian diaspora - between 300 and 800 according to Shresthova’s estimate - the number of people turning up for the first Bollywood film festival at the Aero Cinema also included Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Nepalis and curious Czechs.
Though compared to London or Paris, perhaps it was “nothing”, as Shresthova told Radio Prague at that time, but “you work with what you’ve got”.
“Our objective really was to bring Bollywood to Prague and I think we’ve succeeded in doing that. We also really wanted to motivate the South Asian community here to be more active, and I think may be we’ve succeeded in that.”
The festival, still alive two years later, is a testimony to that.
Shresthova also teaches Indian classical dances and Bollywood numbers in central Europe as a medium to bring other cultures to people.
Along with the movements, she gives students a historical perspective of dance, and with Bollywood numbers, the background. She has taught in the US, Belgium and now in Prague.
However, Shresthova hasn’t forgotten her Nepali roots and that is why she returned to her country to make a documentary to record ancient Nepali dances that are now on the verge of extinction, ironically, due to Nepal’s obsession with Bollywood.
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