It all started off on Friday evening with the first of three performances of Shivani Kara’s hit show Dance With Me Baby at the Lyric Theatre at Gold Reef City.
Almost flawless was the only way to describe this show which featured about 30 dancers in obviously well-rehearsed frenetic routines set to hit Bollywood tunes old and new.
With a clearly perfectionist approach to her work, choreographer Shivani Kara brought out the best in her charges in a truly world-class performance.
Kara also showed that she cared little for the stereotyping of Bollywood dancers as her cast broke several of the myths surrounding such typecasting.
The lead female dancer was Zama Mtshali, a ballet dancer who has taken to Bollywood with a swanlike grace even in the fast-paced items.
One of the male dancers, Reuben Naidoo, despite initially having the audience smirking at his girth, quickly won their acclaim as he showed that despite his rotund form, he could perform the steps as well as any of his fellow cast members, albeit that he might consider wearing slightly longer shirts in his items to avoid showing his belly flopping about unflatteringly when moving rapidly!
Usually in shows where artists perform medleys of Bollywood songs in shorter versions, there is bad editing of the music, but the professional switches could hardly be detected in this show, even when pieces of the same song were put together for items.
Dance With Me Baby is a show that can stand up to the best in India or anywhere else in the world.