It was back in 1998 that the International Encyclopaedia of Dance, in six volumes, published in the UK, made its appearance on the shelves of some upscale bookshops in Pakistan. While browsing through the volumes my first impulse was to see the entry of dance in Pakistan. It was a well-written essay and the writer’s name was Shayma Saiyid.

I forgot about her until 2014, when she interviewed the exponent of Kathak in Pakistan Nahid Siddiqi at the Karachi Literature Festival. Her questions were pertinent and to the point. In two subsequent lit-fests, she interviewed Nighat Chaudry and Sheema Kermani, choreographers and performers of classical dance.

What gharana of Kathak does she belong to? “Lucknow gharana,” she said, only to add “I was merely four when my mother, who is a classical dance enthusiast, took me to Maharaj Ghulam Hussain. Those days we were living in Lahore. The Ustad said that I was too young to undergo rigorous training. Two years later he took me under his wing. For eight years I got lessons in Kathak from him. He was not just a teacher, he was a source of intense inspiration. He made me and his other students perform at prestigious places,” she said with a glow in her eyes.

In conversation with Kathak dancer Shayma Saiyid who does not believe in limiting herself, “One tends to adopt certain nuances of other disciplines. I learnt some movements from Odissi, which I consciously or unconsciously bring into my own dance.”

But as luck would have it, her family had to move to Karachi, where for a few months she took lessons from Nighat Chaudhry. That was the time when Chaudhry was herself getting advanced training at Kathak Kendra in New Delhi. Saiyid went to her during Chaudhry’s long vacation in Karachi.

She has since then gone from time to time to Sheema Kermani, whom she admires no end. The lady, according to Saiyid, gave her lessons in yoga and strenuous physical training, which helped her when she started learning American modern dance during her college years. At Grinnel College, Iowa, she also taught Kathak.

But Sheema Kermani is an exponent of Odissi and Bharat Natyam, while Saiyid’s forte is Kathak. So how did the twain meet?

“Please remember that one tends to adopt certain nuances of other disciplines. I learnt some movements from Odissi, which I consciously or unconsciously bring into my own dance. Likewise, I have incorporated some movements which are essentially those of ballet,” said Saiyid.

She then went on to draw a parallel with languages that become dead and extinct because they don’t accept words from other languages. “If you have watched the performance of great dancers a few years ago and if you see them in action now, you are bound to notice changes.” Her response reminded me that the dance choreographed and performed by her to the accompaniment of Fareed Ayaz and Abu Mohammad’s recorded qawwali at the Islamabad Literature Festival in April was in a different genre, though it had some traces of Kathak.

“I was four when my mother, who is a classical dance enthusiast, took me to Maharaj Ghulam Hussain. The Ustad said that I was too young to undergo rigorous training. Two years later he took me under his wing.”

Shayma Saiyid showed me extracts from some of her performances on the video. Of the two dance recitals which particularly appealed to me one was at the Engendered Festival of Dance at the Lincoln Centre in New York where the glass walls in the background added to the charm of her performance. That was in 2010. The second one was in alap form, where there was no rhythm. The show was held in 2014 at the PNCA and the dance was choreographed by Jahan Ara Akhlaq, who is sadly no more.

Saiyid regrets that there is no recording of her applauded performance at the Wolfson College organised by the Oxford Indian Society, where her recital was around the memorable quatrain of Faiz “Phir koi aya dil-e-zar naheen koi naheen”.

Shayma Saiyid is now in New York to take part in a 10-day residency programme to be conducted by Birju Maharaj and his disciple of 45 years, Sashwati Sen. In the first week of July, she will perform with other participants at the Madison Square Garden.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 26th, 2016