Making the stars dance to her tunes

Dancers like Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, Waheeda Rehman, Vayjanti Mala and Hema Malini are rare finds, says kathak dancer and teacher Vijayshree Chaudhary. Teacher to many actresses, Vijayshree was recently awarded a women achiever's awardu00a0-- the Hirkani Award. She talks to CS about her star students:



First move
A friend of mine teaches Hindi diction to Bollywood actors. Through her, actress Gayatri Patel came to know about me and approached me to teach her kathak. This was four years back. Since then I've had so many actresses coming to learn the dance form. Smilie Suri, Raima (in the picture) and Riya Sen, Neetu Chandra, Geeta Basra, Shazahn Padamsee and Jesse Randhawa were regulars. Gauhar Khan and Anjana Sukhani came to learn for a brief period.

Keeping it alive
Actually I have been training the beauty pageant girls along with Sandip Soparrkar for their talent rounds since a long time. With actresses, the problem is their hectic schedules. They travel so much that they can't stick to a routine. But most of them drop in whenever they are in town to brush up their skills. Many say that classical dance is dying, but I disagree. If so many girls are willingly learning different classical dance forms, there will be a phase when it will once again be popular.

Star trek
I think Raima Sen is very good with expressions. She has an inherent Indian quality that goes hand-in-hand with the dance form. Gayatri Patel is a very graceful dancer, whereas Shazahn Padamsee has a lot of grace and dedication. But Jesse Randhawa takes the cake when it comes to dedication and patience. You make her stand in a certain posture for hours and she wouldn't even utter a word; she has tremendous stamina along with the much-needed grace.