Roussel had conceived it as an opera-ballet to allow the inclusion of Indian elements like dance and Shankar worked hard to live up to it. “I had to make sure that it was nothing so strenuous that it would take away from the singing, yet at the same time, it had to convey the gamut of emotions contained in the work. We gave them basic steps from traditional Indian dances as well as folk forms like Bharatnatyam and Thangta (Manipuri sword dance) respectively and blended it with some ballet acts. The orchestra had it the easiest. They just had some very perfunctory steps that would not put them off balance or out of breath,” she says.
The two-hour opera had Shankar choreographing seven pieces set to Roussel’s philharmonic orchestra. Besides the 50 choir singers, 20 soloists, 26 dancers from her troupe and the 100 plus members of the orchestra, there were some more difficult performers in the ranks: an elephant, a horse, a python and a tiger cub. “It was quite a task getting the act together. Even though the final performances went off without a hitch, the practice sessions were sometimes tight-wire,” she says. On the day of the dress rehearsal, for instance, the python decided to shrug off its usual inertia and give the actor playing the role of Lord Shiva a friendly hug. “After that we decided we couldn’t take the chance. We decided to do without the snake,” she sighs. 

The minor glitches apart, the six weeks of intensive training had its desired effect on the Gallic imagination. When the opera finally opened at the prestigious Theatre-du-Chatelet at Paris earlier this year, there was a 15-minute standing ovation and seven curtain calls at the end of the first show. After the six scheduled shows in Paris, there were requests for further shows. The opera was then invited to the Italian Festival in Spoletto in June, where the appreciation was equally vociferous. “I have received accolades before, but this was overwhelming. Everywhere, after the end of the show, people would queue up to meet us and would shower us with rose petals,” she smiles at the memory. In fact, the entire Indian crew behind the opera was just as thrilled. “To come to another country, take their form of art, do it our way and to get a response like this, is truly unforgettable,” an exuberant Bhansali had commented over the phone from Paris. And to show his appreciation for Shankar, he had even organised an impromptu birthday party for her. After the curtain call following the second show, the 200-odd choir burst out singing happy birthday for her. “It was probably the best birthday ever—having so many talented artists wishing you in unison,” she says. 

The reviews were equally re-assuring. The Independent of the UK, for instance wrote, “If the Théâtre du Châtelet was hoping for a spectacle on a scale seldom seen these days, this work...offered endless potential. Bollywood director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, making his first foray into opera, obliged with a flamboyant production attentive to authentic detail...the exotic dancing not only put them (singers) in the shade but concealed the scantiness of the plot, never mind the subtleties of Roussel’s remarkable score.”
Shankar is not new to experiments in her chosen medium. Trained under the New Dance technique introduced by her legendary father-in-law Uday Shankar, she started her own contemporary dance company in the Seventies. From compositions set to her husband Ananda Shankar’s scores to poems and songs of Tagore, she has traversed the whole gamut of Indian dance fusing it with eclectic innovations. In the three decades following her first professional choreography in 1978, there have been countless performances, each at illustrious venues like the Carnegie Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington DC or the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London where she has seamlessly blended Indian aesthetics with Western sensibilities. There have been prestigious projects too—the 1998 cricket World Cup or the 1982 Asian Games or more recently, Uddharan which won the best production award from the West Bengal government in 2002. 

Her latest project too bears the same stamp of innovation. Tentatively titled We Are The Living , it is based on Sufi poet Rumi’s work Human Being, which has been set to music by Debojyoti Mishra. Shankar considers it her most ambitious project yet, having worked on it for almost a year. “Both poetry and dance are very fluid forms. It takes a lot of effort to synchronise the two. In this poem, Rumi uses several metaphors— the individual is likened to a a guest house and emotions as its occupants. It’s a challenging transposition and has taken me a fair bit of time to arrive at a suitable composition,” she says. The act, which has about 20 members of her troupe performing in it, is set to premiere in mid-December, around her husband’s birthday. “It’s a piece which is close to my heart because of the relevance of its message in the contemporary context. I hope I am able to do justice to it,” she says.