And the winner of The Place Prize 2006 is...

Nina Rajarani

Interviewed by Alison Kirkman

Her prize-winning piece, QUICK!, is performed by four male dancers and four musicians. Dressed as suited businessmen, they convey the hurly-burly of London life using the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam

On hearing about Nina Rajarani’s day-to-day life as company director of Srishti, as well as choreographer and dancer, teacher at her own school established since 1991 and based at Harrow Arts Centre, secretary of the South Asian Dance faculty of the ISTD, wife, and mother of two small children, it suddenly becomes clear from where her inspiration for QUICK! came. “It is very much my everyday life. I’m a very impatient person and very fast at everything I do. I also expect everybody else to be thinking about a million things at once like I do so I’ve been told I’m quite an irritating person to work with. I’d go mad if I wasn’t busy though!”
Interestingly, Nina had no intention of entering the competition in the beginning, “The idea I had about The Place Prize was that it was for contemporary dance and contemporary dance has a very vague definition. I don’t know what it means. I ended up entering because my manager made my life absolute hell and said I had to!” she laughs. “I was in the middle of my spring tour at the time and she kept harassing me to put in an entry video. It seemed like such a hassle to make a three-minute entry video. If I’d had to write something, it would’ve been easier because I could’ve done that in the middle of the night, but making a video was a pain! I did it though and handed it in on the day of the deadline just so she would leave me alone!
“I certainly didn’t think I was going to get shortlisted but when I did, I realised the next stage would completely clash with the tour I had in Norway. I just didn’t think I would get that far in the competition so I hadn’t thought about the logistics of it all! I suddenly realised I had to put together two separate companies with one budget. I actually invested more money than I had so was taking a huge risk. I don’t know what crazy moment I decided to do that, but I felt like I had no other choice. I wasn’t willing to give up either. My manager had worked for two years to get the Norway tour together so both things were really important to me. I felt I had to just risk it and put in the cost myself. I was going to spend almost as much as The Place Prize money was going to be in order to get it to work.”
Having trained at the Bhavan Centre in West London and, on winning a two-year scholarship, travelled to India to learn traditional Bharatanatyam dancing, music and even Sanskrit, Nina firmly believes in only employing dancers whose training is of a similar level. “At the moment I really struggle to find suitable dancers. I have to recruit most of them from India because I want dancers trained solidly in Bharatanatyam. As I have live music in my productions too, I had to employ four dancers and four musicians for each project, so I had 16 artists to pay for – salaries, expenses, visas and airfares.”
With the recent launch of a new group called Yuva Culture, she hopes gradually to solve this situation by training dancers in the UK. Linked to her school, Yuva Culture is for semi-professional dancers coming to the end of their training.
“I’m looking to have that group as a feeder into the main company, but then again, many of my students are very academic and go on to become accountants and dentists and chemical engineers and whatever else! It’s a very difficult decision to make to leave an academic career and become a dancer. I’ve only got one or two mad ones who might want to do it!” This is something Nina has first hand experience of, having shown exceptional ability for academia at school. “All my teachers wanted me to do their subject and I was all set to become a doctor. My family were very unhappy [when I chose dance], not because they don’t like dancing but because they didn’t see it as a secure future for me. They are very proud of me now though.”
And the future looks bright. Her raised profile now means she is thinking of expanding her company, especially as she lost her manager to ill health last year. “At the moment, it’s literally a one-woman show! My manager finished working on the day I won The Place Prize, so I was on this really big high and then the next morning I had all this overwhelming hype and no one to handle things for me so I wasn’t really able to enjoy the moment. It’s becoming too big now to manage on my own so I want to spend time structuring it so I can take on the volume of work that’s coming my way.”
Already, as a direct result of winning The Place Prize, Srishti will tour Portugal this year and Nina has been commissioned to make pieces for two London festivals taking place this summer. “It’s really exciting because I’ve never done any outdoor work. My head is buzzing with ideas.” As a final thought on The Place Prize she adds: “It’s such a huge achievement for me and I think if I never achieve anything else I will still be happy!”

Caption:

Nina Rajarani with a specially commissioned bowl designed for The Place Prize by contemporary glassmakers Bi-Me. Photograph by
Hugo Glendinning.