Isha in Shiva Shakti

What: Shiva Shakti, presented by Inspirago Infinity in association with t2
Where: Kala Mandir
When: October 26, 7pm

Before taking the stage for Shiva Shakti at Kala Mandir in association with t2, Isha Sharvani opened up about skipping school, pursuing dance, dabbling in Bollywood and falling in love...

When did you know you wanted to be a dancer? You apparently wanted to travel with your parents’ company and quit studying, and so you chose dance!

Hahaha... I am sure those were contributing factors. As a 13-year-old kid, it seemed awesome to travel and not go to school! I always loved using my body though. In the beginning, it was sports. I loved gymnastics. Then it was martial arts. Then it evolved into dance. At 13, I started performing on stage. It was much later that I realised that it has grown from something that I liked doing to something I wanted to dedicate my life to. As you grow older, life throws choices and you have to decide. That’s when you actually become a woman from a girl. That change happened in that process of becoming a woman from a girl. You are making those choices and continuing to do that. Even when Bollywood happened, I chose not to stop dancing. When you watch the kind of productions I do, like Shiva Shakti, the amount of practice and discipline that goes into it means that I can’t give it a pause.

A dancer’s life is similar to an athlete’s in a way. You got to sleep early, wake up early, work really hard, and then get really tired by the end of the day. Right now you are seeing the end-product. But actually there is a lot of work that goes behind that. And I enjoy that. For me I enjoy the process as much as I enjoy performing.

People say your dance is quite different from your mother’s (Daksha Sheth). How would you define your style of dance?

I feel culture is not a dead thing. It changes from generation to generation. For me it is like, how do we make our traditions relevant to the people that we are now? My generation of India is not my parents’ generation of India. So the same connect is not happening. I love finding out how I can use my roots, my traditions but at the same time make it such that people in their 20s would want to watch it. So, I never tried to emulate my mother. Not to sound disrespectful. I respect my mother, she is my guru, my best friend, everything. But I never wanted to be her. I very much wanted to find my own path. You can have people whom you look up to, to draw your inspiration from. Like I draw inspiration from athletes, from yogis and from senior dancers from fields I don’t even do... Bharatanatyam dancers such as Malavika Sarukkai. I don’t understand anything about Bharatanatyam but I can draw inspiration from the perfection that they have attained. But I still want to be my own person.

Tell us about Shiva Shakti…

Shiva Shakti, the show you are watching now, took us two years to create. I feel that if you want something which is original, it needs a lot of time. If you want to do a quick thing and say, ‘I will come and study it for six weeks and I will do it’, it’s going to look not real. Shiva Shakti is my father’s (Devissaro) idea. And he was like, Isha I want to see these kinds of moments. And then I would train for months to deliver those moments.

I love finding out how I can use my roots, my traditions but at the same time make it such that people in their 20s would want to watch it... Shiva Shakti, the show you are watching now, took us two years to create

Of the Navarasa, what emotions do you like to express in your dance?

I think the one I enjoy the most is joy. I like being happy.

In Bollywood, we last saw you in David. You seem to be busy with Malayalam movies these days…

Yes, I have a Malayalam movie called Iyobinte Pustakam releasing in a few days. I play a very poor Anglo-Indian girl who gets caught in the socio-political drama that unfolded in India at the time the British were leaving India. I haven’t been offered a Bengali film yet! After Kisna, I remember people would ask if I would be doing films in other languages and I always said yes. It’s about growing as an artiste. It’s about getting a good script and having the challenge of communicating that story. How does language make a difference? I speak Gujarati. So I think I may be able to manage Bengali. If I can manage Malayalam, I can manage Bengali.

How do you choose your films?

Very simple. I get a good script, I do it. I spend a lot of my time in Kerala. I don’t network with people much. Luckily for me people still remember me and still offer me movies. So I will continue doing movies as long as I keep getting offers. But a good script counts.

Besides dancing and acting, what other creative forms do you like?

I guess I am a very passionate person. I like doing a lot of things. I am not good at it but I don’t really care. So yes, I love cooking, once I had this phase when I wanted to paint. I love photography. I love reading. Growing up, I never went to school. So for me books have been a very major way of how I opened up my mind and educated myself.

What do you love to cook?

I cook very simple Indian food. I am vegetarian, though I eat fish at times. When I came to Calcutta last time, I had fish. I think it’s my Malayalee-ness that makes me like fish. I like cooking dal, bhaat, roti, shaak, idli, dosa. I mostly cook only for my family and they do not make much fuss about food. Simple khana chalta hai.

How do you train at home? What is your practice session like?

I wake up early. Normally by 6am, I am on my yoga mat after two cups of tea. By 9am, I am in the studio. Mostly I am involved in practice, or creating or studying or in some way bettering myself in relation to my performance. There is a break for tea in the middle and for some snacks. We start with yoga, do strength training, then my mother teaches martial arts — Kalaripayattu. After that we usually go into aerial techniques. And then we get down to actual dance, from around 11am and continue till 3pm. I come back and have lunch at 4pm. Then I am free and I normally end my day with yoga again. In the morning the yoga is more to stimulate the body, and at the end of the day it’s more to calm the mind down. Even when I am doing a film, my basic riyaz of like one-and-a-half to two hours is there in my day’s schedule. If I don’t practise for two days, I can feel it in my body.

You have been to Finland recently to teach yoga...

Yes. I love yoga. I have been teaching yoga for the past four-five years. I am a student of BKS Iyengar. I have had the privilege of studying with him in Pune. When I was 17 or 18, I had a bad back injury and doctors said I would have to stop dancing for life. It was through the Iyengar yoga that I recovered. Iyengar just opened my mind to yoga in a very different way. You can treat it just as a physical exercise and it will still do so much benefit to you. But if you choose to go deeper, it is a tool given to us that we can use and understand our body. And it’s very scientific. At least for me, I understand that yoga’s origins can also be used as a spiritual practice, but for my mind a scientific approach is a more real one because I can understand that. At least at this stage in my life I don’t understand god, but I can understand my body.

Do you have any regrets about not having been to a school or a proper college for that matter?

When I was in my late teens, early 20s, yes, sometimes I really used to regret it. Because I felt I was missing out on the social aspect. More than the studies, I wished I had this experience... the so-called college life, of having friends, going out to parties at night, getting drunk, doing reckless things... yeah... I would have loved to do all of that! But now, I miss the studying part more. I have a feeling that probably at a later stage I would get a degree in something if any school or college will accept me. I don’t even know that! For me it has always been a non-structured study. I like studying about the human body. It relates to dance. I am beginning to develop a fascination for politics. And I like history a lot.

Any marriage plans?

No. At this stage of my life, I am not really thinking much about marriage.

Are you dating anyone?

No. May be that’s the reason why I don’t have a marriage plan. (Laughs) Well, jokes apart, it’s not something I want to plan. I hope I do get married. I don’t want to stay single for my whole life. But I can’t plan love. It has to happen. Till then I am okay!

Your secret craving...
Sweets. I love sweets!

Technology you are hooked to...
I am not. I am not on Facebook or Twitter. I don’t play video games. But I really love the Internet. It is just one of the most beautiful things that has happened to humanity.

Your celeb crush...
When I was a teenager, I used to crush big time on Milind Soman.

Your kind of music...
Everything from dubstep to classical. For me music is just sound.

A book you keep going back to...
I read books by BKS Iyengar a lot. I like a lot of Indian writers, like Jhumpa Lahiri. I like her style. The Lowland is set in Calcutta and while coming from the airport to the hotel, I was wondering how the city might have looked like at that time.

Favourite film...
I loved Aladdin (the Disney version). Then there was a series called Care Bears. I loved it a lot. And Harry Potter. I was ready to switch fields for once, from dance to witchcraft! If Hogwarts ever contacts me, I would definitely go and get a degree.

Sports you follow...
I love cricket, football, tennis.

Sibendu Das
Is Isha Sharvani the most talented GenX dancer in India? Tell t2@abp.in