A few weeks ago, Haline and I went to see a local theatre show called “I do… but” put on by the Powerhouse Youth Theatre. It was held at a wedding reception place in Fairfield, mostly to keep with the themes of the show and add to the atmosphere of the stage design. An obvious and bright idea. I do…but was about the interracial landmine of mix marriages and cultural conflicts between the multicultural ethnic groups in Australia today. The show itself was very entertaining, digging up all the stereotypical cliches of Lebanese, Greek, Indian and Arab and Australian cultures had to offer and tackling it head on as well as having a go at Australia’s new Sedition laws. Anyway, thats not what this post is about, parts of I do… but had dancing in it, specifically Indian dancing. It was the highlight of the show.

Afterwards, we were chatting to a nice young indian fellow who was at our table and telling him how the dancing was so cool. I’ve never seen a Bollywood movie before and was interested in seeing one after this performance. We asked him if he knew any good ones and he drops a few names, Fire, Earth and Water by Deepa Mehta. They sounded like nice movies, with a very earthly theme to the names of each movie. Thinking they were classic Bollywood movies with all the singing and dancing we went to see Water on Saturday at the Dendy in Newtown.

I’m not going to tell you what Water is about, just that is was a very deep and heavy movie to take in when you expected a light and entertaining movie. It was beautifully shot, I enjoyed it and the movie brought to light an issue that I hadn’t realised existed. You can read what Water is about here and the controversy that its causing in India.

We still want to see that classic Bollywood movie, dreamscape dancing and all, Oh and bring on the garlic nan bread with mango chicken!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Happenings, WWW.