The Rylands-based dance group opened its doors on March 25 2012 and celebrates eight years of passion this year.
The founder, Ahneesh Valodia, said the troupe provides a platform for dancers to pursue their passion while contributing to the enrichment of the greater community through live performances.
“Taare has created an array of colourful memories over the past eight years, which include six themed-productions, performances for a host of charitable, community, private, corporate and festival events as well as television, film and online appearances.
“Opportunities are created for dancers to not only serve the community at large, but also to further strengthen their skills, passion and growth as both dancers and well-rounded individuals. Sustaining full-time occupations or being a student or a young working professional while pursuing dance part-time, often proves to be a challenging task; members at Taare, however, develop a better approach to time-management, resilience and commitment to fulfilling one’s artistic purpose,” Mr Valodia said.
Over the years, Taare has endeavoured to step out of Bollywood as a genre of dance on its own, and has incorporated other dance styles such as contemporary, African, Spanish, hip-hop, Irish, Latin, belly dance and ballet. This has brought diverse people together through dance, and it plays a major part of Taare’s vision. These collaborations have given rise to many successfully staged productions.
“Dance not only entertains, but also serves as a catalyst in the sharing of knowledge, skills and values. We pride ourselves on offering these opportunities to our dancers and sharing unique labours of love with our patrons,” Mr Valodia said.
The current global coronavirus pandemic has taken its toll on Taare too. Rehearsals and events during this time have been cancelled, putting financial and emotional strain on the troupe.
Said Mr Valodia: “Taare has always aimed to find the silver lining in every circumstance and has subsequently further made use of online platforms to share dance with their social media followers as well as continue classes with their dancers, virtually.
“While it by no means replaces the indescribable, joyful moments of being in a rehearsal room or on a performing stage, it has helped us still find a sense of peace and belonging and given us out-of-the-box opportunities to create, stay fit and interact.
“The lockdown has certainly provided us with deeper appreciation and gratitude for the things we once took for granted as performers. As with people all over the world, we will come out stronger and more united as a team and we cannot wait to spread love and joy with our patrons again.”
Mr Valodia is the artistic director of Taare. Trained in Indian classical dance with an extensive career as a performer, he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a degenerative muscular disorder, and thus his time on stage was curtailed.
At age 21, however, he founded Taare as a way of pursuing dance through choreography while creating a platform for aspiring dancers to pursue their passion for Bollywood dance and the performing arts.