Shchukina, Alena Mashkanova, a 22-year-old Belarusian and Ekaterina Bezverkhaya, a 20-something Russian, are in Chandigarh's Sector 10 Leisure Valley for an event hosted by the tourism department. The audience, a liberal mix of middle-aged men, portly aunties, cops and college students high on testosterone, might not appreciate the nuances of Cirque du Soleil-style gymnastics but they know exotica when they see it. And they know how to gawk. The three girls are mobbed after the performance, mainly by policemen on duty, but are quickly herded off by security.
Shchukina, who learnt dancing from an exotic dance centre in Cherepovets, lives in Goa. She is on a contract with Yogi's Angels, a talent management agency, and travels to other parts of India to perform at corporate events, weddings and private parties. For a 20-minute performance, Shchukina will pocket Rs 20,000. "It's better than I would earn anywhere in Eastern Europe," says Shchukina, in fluent English. She has been shuttling between Russia and India for the last two years for performances like this one. Mashkanova and Bezverkhaya speak in halting English, are new to India and Chandigarh is their first experience.
Blonde hair, blue eyes and long limbs are now a common feature in our visual culture-from Twenty20 cricket matches to Bollywood song sequences, white women up the glamour quotient as much they inflame the moral police. What is not equally obvious is that they also have a market in the boondocks of India and an avid audience that on a dull evening in a duller small town, is not going to say no to white spice. Like Shchukina, hundreds of girls from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia earn their living through performances in small towns/cities such as Rohtak, Jalandhar, Moradabad and Bareilly. In the last five years, the towns have become home to many newly rich, who have money to spend on ostentatious entertainment.
"The peak season is between October to March where we provide dancers for 10-40 shows a month in places like Rudrapur," says Gaurav Gondal, 33, who quit a job in Britannia to start Yogi's Angels in Goa, the agency that has brought Shchukina to Chandigarh. Currently, he has 14 dancers and three choreographers on board, who travel to wherever the party is. Last December, his agency took a laser dance troupe to Pipalaya village in Rajasthan to regale the audience at a wedding hosted by an industrialist. The price was Rs 2 lakh plus. "Though the setting was rustic, the audience was high profile," says Gondal.
One weekend in February was specially packed. Twenty-something Ukrainian dancer Valerie Panova gyrated to pumping music during a fire and ice act for a gathering of Ahmedabad builders during an award show, while her Ukrainian counterpart did a 20-minute belly dancing act, again, at a wedding in Ahmedabad. Another group of Russian and Ukrainian girls danced to popular Bollywood numbers in Kalyan, a Mumbai suburb. "When you have foreign dancers, firstly it appears that you've spent serious money on your party. Then if you have guests from abroad, it adds to the ambience," says Ashish Mullick, who runs AM Entertainment Solutions, a Delhi-based artist management agency. In the last one year, he has commissioned foreign dancers for corporate shows in Indore, Dhanbad and Nagpur.
Besides dancing at weddings and events, many of these dancers accompany Bollywood actors, who have been roped in by political parties for election rallies. "My artists have performed at political rallies in Hapur and Ghaziabad," says Ali Khan, who runs AlKhan Entertainment. The task, as Tej Lamba, who runs event management agency Talent Abuzz, puts it succinctly, is "the same as Salman Khan's"- to hold the attention of the crowd. The Delhi-based Khan has four artists, from Egypt, Lebanon and Belarus on board, amongst whom is the widely in demand Egyptian girl, Rihab- who dances at Delhi's Mashrabiya, a Lebanese restaurant at Hotel Ashoka. Delhi-based Sarvinoz Baltabaeva, 23, a former actress from Tashkent is a "big Madhuri Dixit fan". "When I first saw Madhuri Dixit in Maar Dala, I went mad. I learnt the dance by watching the video and I later performed it at the Indian Cultural Centre in Tashkent. On the basis of my performance, I was sent to Delhi to learn at the Kathak Kendra in 2004," she says. These days, Baltabaeva, who goes by the stage name of Suzanne, is one of the most sought after mujra dancers in Delhi. The cost of one performance: Rs 20,000. "The audience loves seeing a foreigner dancing to a Bollywood number," the cute Uzbek says in fluent Hindi. Last year, she danced at a Dussehra fair in Bikaner to Bollywood number Nimbooda, amidst hoots and cheers, after which nobody wanted to even glance at the tepid show put up by the local artistes. Her contemporary, a soft-spoken Russian, in her late thirties, who goes by the stage name of Ela, is touted as the best mujra dancer in Delhi. She refused to divulge any details despite repeated calls. But when we contacted her, she was touring Ludhiana and Himachal Pradesh.
In central Asia and Eastern Europe if you have a natural disposition for dance and rhythm, it turns out to be your meal ticket. Many of the young dancers have made the long journey to tiny accommodations in south Delhi and Yari Road, Mumbai, as a means for easy money. Back home, jobs are few, especially for women. "In India, it is easy to find a way to stay, work and perform. There are shows happening everyday," says Madina Andassova, a 27-year-old Kazakh.
While they learn Kathak by the day, during nights, they transform themselves into pouting sun-kissed belly dancers, blond-wigged, Brazilian waxed can-can artists and even lithe rope dancers. And occasionally, clad in anarkali suits, they put their Kathak learning to best use-regaling the audience with lascivious chest thrusting to Kajra re. On tours, they live a strict, regimented life. They are herded from the airport to the performance venue and hardly allowed a glimpse of the towns they are whizzing through. They travel thrice a week and sometimes head back right after wrapping the show.
According to Khan, the Delhi-based agent, there are around 10-12 dancers and four agencies that commission artists in Delhi. After several attempts at citizenship, they marry their Indian agents. Khan is married to an "exotic Lebanese belly dancer" Laila.
One reason why they head to India could be the country's biggest cultural import: Bollywood. Andassova grew up watching Mithun Chakraborty jiving in Disco Dancer in the oil-producing city Chimkent, in southeastern Kazakhstan. "The film released in Kazakhstan in 1990 and it was quite a rage. People yelled Jimmy Jimmy," says Andassova, who moonlighted on the stage briefly after her scholarship year (she got a one-year scholarship from ICCR to learn Kathak in Delhi in 2004) before hanging up her dancing shoes. "As a dance form, I liked mujra, it has its own place in history. But I didn't like the way people perceived it in India," says Andassova, who studied psychology at South Kazakhstan Government University.
It's not easy to keep pace with the demands of this unforgiving trade. Renate Manescu, a feisty Romanian, who has been living in Delhi since 1993, is a seasoned performer. Along with her Indian partner, she does salsa performances in The Taj Mahal hotel in Delhi. Manescu, 41, has danced along Daler Mehndi in several shows. "The trade has deteriorated in the last five years," says Manescu. "There's undercutting and oversupply, besides quality performances are few. Clients make demands for "four blue eyed blondes"." Besides which the girls have to deal with an unknown language, crummy accommodation and an unfamiliar culture. "I knew very little English, and had a tough time even with the simplest of tasks," says Andassova. The thought of home is never far from their minds. While they dance at night, by day, they call their relatives at home. "In my first year, I felt like going back," says Baltabaeva.
Back in Chandigarh, Shchukina and her team is ready to be driven back to their hotel. There are ogling men all around and cameraphones clicking as the girls walk away. Doesn't this bother them? "It's a professional thing. I try not to think about who's watching me," shrugs Bezverkhaya dismissively.
