Going Bollywood: can kathak dancers stop the show in Bombay Dreams?

Dance Magazine, June, 2004 by Sylviane Gold

Broadway audiences are also trained to expect a particular style of dance and dancer, and Bombay Dreams subverts those expectations. In London, the East-meets-West aspect of the choreography has been echoed in the Anglo-Indian make-up of the audience. Perhaps the show's presence in New York will enlarge the usual theater audience by enticing some of those New York cabbies--not to mention their friends and families--into a Broadway theater for the first time. At the very least, Kapur says, the show is bringing something new to local dance floors. "Now when the dancers go to clubs, wherever they ate, they start doing Indian dancing!"

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, and The New York Times.