The Show at Chowdiah

This show was due from a long long time and in retrospect, it was fully worth it! Its been over 15 days now, but we are still reeling from it!

For a show put together with such short notice, it was amazing how it all fell into place. But lets start at the very beginning.

The lovely chaps at IndianStage.in came to us a couple of months back saying they wanted to start conducting shows in Bangalore for their clients and for the general public and they would like to start with The Raghu Dixit Project. They had no sponsors, no partners, no nothing, but they knew they had to put together a good show and they were confident that Bangalore would not let them down if they could put together something great!

Now the sanest thing to do at that point is to say – DON’T!

But we decided otherwise – we looked at this as an opportunity to create something that we had always dreamed of! a show that truly defined the Raghu Dixit Project. A remarkable collaboration with various dancers, musicians and also with video jockeys, and some great sets! The plan was to set the bar for performance so high that it would be something that everyone will want to attend!

So we got around to doing just that.

We got Clio, the Greek-French harp player from Pune to come to Bangalore a few days in advance to re-arrange 2 songs with us, we got Nritarutya, the best dance company in the world to work out something that would eventually blow our minds for Khidki, Garudi dancers (dressed as HUGE dolls) to come on stage to add colour to Mysore Se Aayi, Kamsale dancers to join us on stage for ‘Mahadeshwara’, Anil and his team from Davis Pro Sound to set up a video projector system and work with us over a couple of weeks to get the concept and the meaning behind each song right so that they can then project some amazing stuff behind us when we were playing and most importantly, the sound and the lights itself!

We also got our dear friend Varun Agarwal from Last Minute Films, to set up 5 cameras in the hall to record all of this for a DVD to be released!

The days leading to the show were filled with hectic activity and it was like sinking into quicksand with the number of things that we had to get done. Fight everyone’s schedules, rehearse, co-ordinate things with the guest performers, ensure all equipment was in order, permissions, printing, making sure we invite everyone for the show and then our costumes and the show itself!

But once it started, it was pure magic! the best show of our lives – the most co-ordinated, visually rich and filled with some amazing moments! And the audience itself, some fantastic people who were with us through the show lifting the performance even higher

Our heartfelt thanks to Clio, the folk dancers, the sound and lights company – Davis Pro Sound, IndianStage for seeding this idea – we hope you continue to do this a lot more and to Nritarutya – by far the best in the business, we ourselves were not ready for what you guys did on stage with Khidki! It was magical!

If you were there at the show, let us know what you thought of it and also – watch this space for announcements about the DVD.

Thank much to Kalyan Varma, Ganesh Raghunathan and Prasad Bhat for the excellent photographs!