‘I don’t always read to the end of long emails but this time I did…scrolling down through the regular update from West Yorkshire Playhouse at the end of April, the words “Be a Bollywood star! Your chance to audition for Ooh La La its Bollywood…” leapt out at me…too many times in the past I had let opportunities for community participation in local theatre go by – lacking confidence - not this time! I was encouraged by the friendly & encouraging person who answered my questions when I rang to book the audition so I set off hopefully having told no-one what I was doing to avoid future embarrassment!
I had somehow calculated the odds to be about even so I was reasonably confident being a keen dancer, albeit never having done bollywood-style…reasonably confident till the first moment of the audition when Zoobin made us go up onto the balls of our feet for an eternity! My confidence evaporated… & it became a survival exercise or at least a free dance class…not to mention the shock of being plunged straight into a completely new dance form nonstop for 45 minutes!
It got better…I began to recognise some moves from yoga [‘I can do this bit!’] so felt a bit encouraged…I was pleased with myself for daring to get this far…there was also an instant camaraderie among the dancers & the fun atmosphere, & doing something so different from anything I usually do…I still thought it would turn out to be a one-off Bollywood dance experience…so was thrilled to discover I would be in the show!
Weeks of rehearsals lay ahead culminating in the show at the WYP...I did not yet understand that when Zoobin says ‘Is it clear?’ it is a euphemism for ‘Are you following & remembering all these complicated dance sequences?’…!
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