Corona or no corona, the tots of Eurokids Salt Lake love their annual dandiya celebration and this year they performed in a mix of online and offline shows.
“Every year, we celebrate Navratri with this vibrant dance on campus but this time we asked students to dance from home, online. However many parents said their kids were desperate to come to class and so we allowed six of them to come and dance on campus. Another six danced from home,” said Soma Chandra, principal of the school’s BB Block branch. The school also has a branch in CK Block.
The kids had come dressed in fineries — bright ghagras, kurtas and masks — and counted family members as backup dancers. Abir Sarkar danced to the Ramleela song Nagara sang dhol baje with his mother, Anya Banerjee Gomes did garba with her mother while Sarthak Sinha danced to Dholi taro with his mother and grandmother.
A mother and her son shake a leg Picture sourced by the correspondent
Once in a while, the kids watching the show over Zoom unmuted themselves and others could hear and see what they were up to. Little Rishika Mundra was visible once in a while wearing a red Spiderman mask watching the show from inside her car.
Mehenba Huidrom entertained on and off stage. Once in a while when his video inadvertently got turned on, others got to see him running around the room chasing objects that he sent flying and sometimes the four-year-old even rolled on the floor.
But when he took stage Mehenba was a picture of poise. He remembered all the steps of Chogada tara and needed no cues from his mother and sister, who danced with him. “Had I given him a chance to dance he would have felt lazy and not practised. But I told him this was compulsory and he spent every evening learning the steps,” laughed mother Aurora. The family is originally from Manipur and Aurora danced with her son and daughter Malem, who too is a former student of Eurokids.