Indian troupe to perform in opening ceremony

Raghavan Nair, with his troupe of nine dancers and Devinder Dharia, with his group of 15, will represent Indian culture as the eyes of the world turn centrestage to witness the opening of the world’s greatest sports festival.

“One morning I received a call from the Ethnic Department asking me to come for audition. I could barely believe what I had heard. I went with 20 of my Indian and Australian students.

“There were about 35 groups waiting. Each was given two minutes to perform. Our excitement knew no bounds when we were amongst the chosen 20-odd groups comprising about 2,000 dancers”, says Nair, who hails from Kasergoe village in Kerala and whose father, Krishnan Nair, was a famous Kathakali dancer at Kalakshetra in Chennai.

“As I was growing up, I realised that my village had only green fields and farming to offer. We moved to Delhi at the age of 10 and it was while living in Mandi House that I was exposed to the rich world of dance, drama and music”.

Nair joined the Bharatiya Kala Kendra at the age of 16 and started learning various forms of dance under great maestros.

“I began with learning Uday Shankar’s contemporary style of dancing, then became a shishya of Narendra Sharma, the then director of the Kendra, and went on to learn Kathakali under Guru Gopinath and Kucchipuddi under Swapna Sundari”.

Nair left the Kendra in 1980 as a choreographer and director and worked at the Song and Drama division of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry before joining Modern School as a senior dance teacher.

“At that juncture my brother, Krishnan Nair, who was running his own institution called Kala Bharati in Sydney, sponsored me to Australia. Within a year I started the Indian Dance Theatre with just one student at the Bondi Pavilion, which is like an academy where people come and hire halls for performing and other arts. Soon I had 10 students and began receiving invitations to perform”.

As Nair says, “Before the selection, the Olympic ceremony choreographer had called me and told me that he wanted to learn some mudras from me. We worked for two hours without the slightest inkling that a few weeks hence my troupe would be chosen for the great event”.

While dancing and promotion of Indian culture is closest to Nair’s heart, it wasn’t enough to sustain a growing Nair family.