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FRONT SEAT: From ballet to belly dancing
Droves of people arrived at the time written on the invitation cards which was eight, only to be told at the gate of the hotel by a man that it would begin at 8:30,8:30,8:30.” Outside, a group of foreigners were overheard complaining, “In Pakistan they don’t bother about time.”
When the audience was finally allowed in one had ample time to enjoy the sweet dicor, as the show started half an hour later.
The performances, which consisted of a few ballet dances and a few cabaret ones were presented by the Ballet Novoi Theatre group from Uzbekistan. Having performed in Islamabad and Lahore, a day each, Karachi was the last stop getting the lion’s share, two evenings to be precise. The programme was hosted by PC hotel to raise money for a welfare organization. The dances took place on a stage erected above the surface of the swimming pool, decorated with flowers and balloons. It was a pleasant evening and rather enjoyable to sit outside and leisurely wait for the chronically late Karachi crowd to drift in, which they proceeded to do well after the performance finally began. The host Sofia Shahid, promised that the show would begin with classical ballet.
From Tchaikovsky to Celine Dion, all the way through ‘Turkish dance,’ ‘Jazz adagio’ and belly dancing this programme gave little morsels of the entire exotic spectrum
“The royal ballet” it certainly was not, and while the short excerpt from Swan Lake was sweet, some of the other ballet numbers were slightly out of time. One didn’t have to worry too much about the quality of the dancing, though, since contrary to the advertisement ballet was perhaps a third of the day’s proceedings. It didn’t take long to realize that the programme printed overleaf on the ticket was entirely arbitrary and should perhaps have read, “possible programme,” as the numbers veered considerably off the declared course.
But it wasn’t a wasted evening. After the two or three ballet pieces, the rest of the programme consisted of racy cabaret numbers and exotic belly dance routines. Witnessing an Uzbek singer exactly mimic Whitney Houston’s And I will always love you, or watching the troupe present exact replicas of the Backstreet Boys’ dance routine was very entertaining. Post modern discourse would have something to say about performers from a country that forms an uneasy East-West marriage, singing songs in a language they can barely speak and replicating dance forms for a country like Pakistan; but one is not sure what it would be.
The performance turned out to be sheer, if a bit facile entertainment. To have little trinkets of exotica brought before you, to not have to worry too much about struggling with something that might be too highbrow — perhaps that is as much as Karachiites can endure or deserve, at least until they’ve learnt to switch their mobiles to silent during a performance.
From Tchaikovsky to Celine Dion, all the way through “Turkish dance”, “Jazz adagio” and belly dancing this programme gave you little morsels of the entire exotic spectrum. And perhaps it wouldn’t have been disappointing if the hosts had taken a little care in wording their invitations or in advertising the show as “classical ballet.” The men in the audience seemed a little overwhelmed as cabaret revisited Karachi after several decades. The skimpy costumes went a long way in highlighting beautiful figures, not ballerina bodies, not androgynous nor tediously muscular. The pleasure of seductive lights, music and the enticing dancing were certainly intensified not only by the long wait Karachi has had to endure, but by whiffs of barbecued food carried over the breeze of the pleasant little evening.
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