A still from Padmavati, which wowed audiences in Paris and Italy

Tanusree Shankar has just touched down in her favourite city — Calcutta, of course — after a whirlwind tour of Paris and Spoletto, in the Umbrian Hills near Rome. After choreographing the opera Padmavati and winning over critics and audiences alike, she is already snowed under with work in her hometown.

She is shooting for the television reality show, Naach Dhoom Machale on ETV Bangla. Also, she’s matching her dainty steps to the words of the famous Sufi poet Mowlana Jalal-ad-din Rumi — choreographing a dance composition tentatively titled We are the living, set to the words of Rumi’s poem, Human being.

There’s also the annual soiree of her dance school — Ananda Shankar Centre for Performing Arts — that’ll be held at the Science City auditorium in August.

But her most avant-garde project, the extravagantly choreographed Padmavati, was a lavish spectacle on a monumental scale. The opera by French composer Albert Roussel, mounted by filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali, opened to packed houses in places like the prestigious Theatre du Chatelet in Paris and the Italian Festival at Spoletto last month and received a 15-minute standing ovation and seven curtain calls at the end of its first show.

To earn the adulation, Tanusree had to work her fingers to the bone, putting together an exotic cast that included a real trumpeting elephant, a stamping horse, a gambolling tiger cub and a coiled python along with dancers from her troupe. “The whole thing was an ordeal, to put it mildly. But everything was finally synchronised without members of the cast being scared off the stage by the other creatures present there,” she recounts.

But there were minor hiccups along the way — with the exotic cast going for each other’s throats, quite literally. One of the male dancers playing the role of Lord Shiva had neatly wrapped a python around his throat during rehearsals to give the opera a degree of authenticity. The creature had been unusually well-behaved all through. But during the dress rehearsal it suddenly decided that it didn’t care for the boy’s elaborate headgear and costume and decided to give him a tight squeeze. Says Tanusree: “I requested the director to let it go. I would rather have a prop missing than a cast member.”

Filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Tanusree at the Theatre du Chatelet where Padmavati was staged

Tanusree says that it all began with an unexpected phone call from the Bollywood director known for his flamboyant movies like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Devdas and Saawariya. In fact, Bhansali flew down to Calcutta several times to discuss the choreography of a project that was conceived on a scale grander than anything that he had done before. “I’m proud to be able to showcase Tanusree’s modern choreography with ancient roots to audiences abroad. It’s marvellous how she has choreographed pieces for abstract Western opera music,” says Bhansali.

The task she took on was indeed on a giant scale. She had to choreograph seven pieces to Roussel’s philharmonic orchestra, involving 45 choir singers, 26 dancers, 20 soloists, approximately 10 extras and of course, the animals. “It was an exercise in patience,” she says.

Bhansali, who has consistently praised her work throughout the opera, even had the choir of almost 200 people singing ‘Happy Birthday’ for her on the second day of the performance in Paris, after the curtain came down. “That was the best birthday song that I’ve ever heard. Imagine having your birthday wish sung by some of the best singers in Europe and you can sense how overwhelmed I was,” she says.

Tanusree and daughter Sreenanda Shankar get ready to shoot the Bengali telefilm Kal Baisakhi

But Tanusree isn’t resting on her laurels — on the contrary she’s trying to reinvent herself with every step forward. Her reality show Naach Dhoom Machale is now in its second season and she has moved on from judging performances of celebrity dancers to scouting for talented newcomers. The format of the talent hunt is such that absolute newbies get a platform to showcase their dancing skills in front of celebrity judges and Tanusree seems to love every minute of it.

So is she like Simon Cowell of American Idol fame, or is she the kind who heaps praise on all the participants without an ounce of edgy sarcasm? “Neither. I am the motivating judge who eggs on freshers to deliver their best,” she says. “I only have suggestions for participants who want to improve their act,” she adds.

It’s not just the newcomers who are picking up moves from the seasoned dancer. Tanusree claims that she is going through the process of learning as well. “These are rank freshers but their levels of commitment and hard work are hard to emulate,” she says.

But everyone agrees that she takes her role as a judge as seriously as the contestants on the other side of the fence. “Tanusreedi is committed to excellence and there is nothing that she does for a lark. She treats each one of her assignments with a certain degree of seriousness. She was always constructive and gave priority to the show even when she had more important matters to attend to,” says filmmaker Riingo, a fellow judge on the show.

Tanusree’s afternoons are reserved for Yoga sessions followed by dance classes and rehearsals for upcoming shows. Photograph by Subhendhu Chaki

She is, of course, more used to being a performer than a judge. Currently, she’s working on a mammoth project titled We are the living that involves choreographing dance compositions for the poem Human being by Rumi. Tanusree believes that this is one of her most ambitious projects because she’s trying to convey the great poet’s Sufi philosophy through innovative dance movements.

“The poet likens the human existence to a guest house and feelings to new arrivals in this work of his. I think the mood of the poem lends itself well to contemporary times and it’s a challenge to translate that mood into an arresting dance composition,” she says.

She has almost 20 members of her troupe working on the project with extremely innovative music by Debojyoti Mishra and props accompanying the dance pieces. “It has taken me almost a year conceptualising and choreographing it and I’m eager to premiere the piece in December on Ananda’s birthday,” she says. But then, innovation has always been the watchword for this dancer par excellence whose first piece of choreography as a professional, way back in 1978 at the Pacific Area Travel Association Conference held in Hotel Ashoka, was a resounding success.

In the performance she used audio-visual slides as part of her dance composition when such technology was very novel. “I had to arrest the attention of viewers within a span of 45 minutes and this is how I went about doing it,” she recalls.

The phenomenal success of her first show weakened her resolve to be a housewife. “Yes, that was my first choice when I married into the illustrious Shankar family at the age of 17,” she confesses candidly.

She admits that she was never ambitious. “I was simply content with life and happy about being married to Ananda Shankar, another famous personality in the Shankar clan that produced stalwarts like Uday Shankar and Pandit Ravi Shankar.

In fact, the marriage happened quite early and at a time when she was not really thinking seriously about career decisions. She was a student of the legendary dancer Amala Shankar, who later became her mother-in-law. In fact, she insists that she barely even knew about the existence of Ananda Shankar, who was then busy in the US cutting his debut LP with Warner Bros.

Tanusree was just 13 when she met him and they eventually got married four years later when he was 30. “He kept on teasing me all his life that I married him because I was infatuated and he was the one who had fallen in love with me,” she muses. But her husband always insisted that she was an accomplished dancer, and should not waster her talent. “In fact, Ananda had only one word of advice for women: don’t be a vegetable,” she says.

It was Ananda who egged her on to choreograph shows, telling her gently but persistently that she had to be serious if she wanted to pursue a career in dance. “He used to always say that people would have expectations from me simply because I belonged to a family of super achievers,” she says. Her dancing style was very original, based on the Shankar technique of ‘New Dance’, developed to perfection by the famed Uday Shankar.

Rita Bhimani, public relations honcho and friend, has noted the artist’s growth for several years now. “She keeps updating herself and her crew with the times. She has also sought out dancers from the West so that new techniques can be learnt from them,” she says.

When Tanusree’s dancing career took off, it was her husband again who coaxed her to get into films. But Tanusree put her foot down firmly saying she has done enough, thank you. But Ananda wasn’t one to give up easily. When she got a film offer from a prestigious production house in Calcutta, her husband had a practical suggestion. “He asked me not to look back if the film bombed at the box office but I could have an acting career if the film went down well,” she says.

She was cast as the lead actress for the film adaptation of noted author Manik Bandopadhyay’s story Neki (The Ignorant). The film version was called Swati and was a roaring success. Immediately she began getting numerous movie offers and even starred in a film called Dui Prithibi along with the celebrated Uttam Kumar. “Another phase of my life had begun,” she says.

(From top) The dancer with her husband Ananda Shankar, actors Uttam Kumar and Victor Banerjee on the sets of Dui Prithibi; Tanusree as a young bride with sister-in-law Mamata Shankar; With the director and cast of Hemanter Pakhi, the story of an elderly Bengali housewife who becomes alienated from the family as her sons grow up

In fact, there was no stopping her once she plunged headlong into the profession. She has even tried hardcore commercial ventures in the ’80s, notable among which is a film called Aagun where she even did an ‘item number’. Tanusree says the role was fun. “The dance steps were flippant and suited the role of a hotel crooner. I just tried to be spontaneous throughout,” she says.

And like her dance performances, her acting career, too, grew more nuanced. She began choosing roles that allowed her to play her age and be the focus of the story. Subsequently, debutant director Urmi Chakrabarty signed her on for Hemanter Pakhi that went on to win the National Award for the best regional film in 2004. She played an elderly Bengali housewife who gets alienated from the family as her sons grow up. “I knew I had made the right decision when I zeroed in on her for the role. It was one of the finest performances that I’d seen in a long time,” says director Urmi Chakrabarty.

Co-star Parambrata Chattopadhyay, who played her youngest son in the film, says that she is very serious about everything she does. “She’s extremely committed in every sphere of her life. She gave a great performance in the film and even when I was anchoring a television show in which she was a judge, she was very focused,” he says.

But what Parambrata remembers more is her affection and the positive energy she exudes. “You simply feel comfortable being around her,” he fondly recalls.

But the Real McCoy was her landing a role in Mira Nair’s Namesake. “When I turned up for the film’s auditions, I found a dozen other actresses from the Bengali film industry already sitting there,” she says, smiling.

Nair asked her to read a few lines from the script. “She was in splits when I started reading out the lines. Apparently the way I was saying it was very funny,” adds Tanusree. She had a blast playing the character of a hassled woman who’s eager to get her daughter married off at the earliest.

But she has always been disdainful about the tag of being a celebrity. Every family member has succeeded in carving out a niche in their respective fields. “We rely on interpersonal relationships, more than anything else,” she says.

Sister-in-law Mamata Shankar, who has scaled great heights as an actress in several National Award-winning films and is also a skilled dancer, is quick to agree. “Tanusree and I were friends long before we became family,” says Mamata. “I have sometimes fought with my brother Ananda, but never with Tanusree,” she adds.

Tanusree’s also close to her mother-in-law Amala Shankar who was once her teacher. “She confides in me like a friend. After Ananda left us, the bond has grown stronger,” she says.

Despite all the adulation, Tanusree is a workaholic at heart. After her morning workout sessions, she rushes to her dance school to sift through the paperwork. The afternoons are reserved for Yoga sessions followed by dance classes and rehearsals for forthcoming shows.

In between, she manages to squeeze in time to nag her daughter, Sreenanda, who lives in Mumbai and who has completed an acting course at New York’s Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. “When I keep pestering her to get married and have kids, my daughter says that she’s scared to have children in case they turn out to be brats like her. She’s not too keen on being as patient as me,” says Tanusree.

Patience is a quality that the dancer swears by. She says this is always what keeps her going. There are already various aces up her sleeves for the annual soiree of her dance school. And that, she says, “will again be something to remember.”