With its third production running to packed houses, Yellow Brick Project plans to go national.
In 2009, Nitya Vaishnavi Singh and Prerna Kapur — students of Lady Shriram College for Women (LSR) and part of its dance society — realised that there were too many talented dancers in the capital but very few avenues for them. So, they decided to come up with the Yellow Brick Project, a young performer’s collective. What started with a handful of students from LSR wanting to dance and entertain has now grown into a group of over 100 performers from all demographics.
“DU’s (Delhi University) dance events were very competitive but had a rigid format,” says Singh, one of the founders. “So we initiated the project with the aim to tell a simple story that anyone can relate to in the most entertaining way possible.” The group put up its first production ‘Razzle Dazzel’ at the Kamani Auditorium in 2009, interweaving different dance and musical styles such as jazz, hip-hop, lyrical, ballroom, Indian and contemporary.
As under-graduates struggling with classes, exams and other engagements, getting sponsors wasn’t easy. “But we drew up a proposal and went around asking for donations and managed to raise some funds,” says Singh.
This year, telecom major Nokia agreed to sponsor them. “This was a lucky break for us because apart from giving us money — which we required to meet our production expenses — it was also reassuring that someone had faith in the project and took a risk around it,” says Singh.
In August, Yellow Brick put up its third annual production, Juliet Must Die, a musical whodunit revolving around the the heights and pitfalls of show business. The N8 handsets, which the telecom company distributed to all the participants and volunteers, were “used to record and upload rehearsals on Facebook and Youtube,” says Singh. “This helped in generating a buzz around the show online.”
“For us, the youth is a very important target segment,” says Nokia Communications Director Poonam Kaul. “The participants are volunteers and most of them balance their studies or jobs with their passions, be it singing, dancing, acting, or film making.” Besides being associated with them as the title sponsor, the service provider looked at ways in which the cast and crew could use its devices as enablers.
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Through a wide range of videos — some interesting ones showing the participants organising a ‘flash mob’ in one of the bigger malls of the city — the project has received a positive response on the Internet, its primary tool for marketing.
Over the last three years, some of the participants moved abroad to study or work. But there are the regulars who make it a point to return to the capital every summer.
“Initially, Yellow Brick was just about dance. But we realised that putting up a show requires a great deal of synchronisation,” says Singh. So they roped in Atul Jindal and Karan Kumar from Big Dance Centre to mentor the choreography, and Clarence Gonsalves, bassist for the band Them Clones, to provide music. “They helped us polish our techniques and avoid repetition.”
Most of the production work is managed by students. The sets are designed by architecture student Shagun Sangha, while the costumes are designed by dancers Rukman Dhawan, Devika Bhargav, Udita Jain, Mallika Agrawal and Jannani Rajan.
This year proved to be a specially encouraging one for Yellow Brick Project. “We’ve had full house at Kamani this year and have finally broken even on our initial investment,” says an ecstatic Pooja Singh, one of the directors of the project. “We have a database of people who would like to get involved with the project in the future.”
Pooja Singh says that in the years to come, they hope to turn the project into a professional venture and take the annual show to other cities.
With an increasing number of dance schools churning out fresh talent, Yellow Brick Project seems like a good way to flaunt it.