Driven on by my love of the dance

Honey Kalaria, 30, has battled disability and tragedy to become a top Bollywood dance expert. So just how has she managed to do it? She talks to ANASTASIA STEPHENS.

Honey Kalaria Honey Kalaria

I HAVE only a vague memory of being taken to our local hospital in Malawi to have my right foot broken. I was two years old. My mother had noticed, with increasing anxiety, that my foot wasn't growing properly.

The ankle and bones, instead of growing straight, were bending inward. My foot was clubbed - a condition that, left untreated, could have left me permanently crippled.

During my operation, the doctor, a bone specialist from South Africa, broke my foot in several places and put it in a brace so the bones could regrow and realign. My family was aware that I might end up with a twisted foot and one leg longer than the other.

My poor mother, who used to massage my foot in tears, praying that it would grow correctly, nursed me back to health and my foot healed properly. There was another little girl in the hospital with a club foot who wasn't so lucky. Despite surgery, she ended up with a permanent limp.

So I consider myself blessed: blessed that I healed, and blessed that I can dance - especially after my doctors told me that it would take a miracle.

My foot's not perfect. Even today, I notice it isn't as mobile as it should be - dance trainers have told me to flatten it, but I can't. However, the problem is small and it barely affects me.

My love of dance comes from my mother. It's a passion we both share - and one that enabled me to overcome some of the major difficulties in my life. She taught me to dance for my first performance, aged four, at a Diwali festival in our home town.

I won first prize and got so much encouragement and praise that, from that moment on, I was dancing whenever I could.

So, when my parents moved to the UK in the mid-Eighties to escape political unrest in Africa, I took dance classes of all sorts - belly dancing, contemporary dance, salsa, you name it. Dance absorbed me completely.

Every moment was spent trying to perfect my movements.

By 13, I was dancing professionally in the evenings and at weekends, which was when things started taking off. One day, after performing at a charity function in Ilford, Essex, two promoters approached me - one inviting me to perform at a show in Norway, the other asking me to perform at the Hilton Hotel on London's Park Lane.

After that, my career flourished.

When I was 16, I was asked to choreograph my first Bollywood concert, at Wembley conference centre. It was such an exciting time.

It really felt as if my life was meant to be on this path. Everything seemed to fall into place.

But one day I was in a car with my brother, sister and three friends, driving through Ilford in the rain, when a bus pulled out suddenly and went straight into us. My sister Preepi and two of my friends were killed outright. My brother Manish, a friend and I were lucky to come away alive.

That moment shattered my life.

The accident fractured my jaw in three places, leaving me with stitches all over my head and face - mostly on my forehead, which remains scarred to this day. My shoulder was also fractured and I couldn't move my right arm properly.

The doctors thought I'd never fully recover. I remember being in intensive care and trying to summon up my inner courage because I knew I had to be strong for my family. My parents were completely devastated by the death of my sister.

I still shudder when I remember the day the doctors came to see me and uttered the horrific words: "You need to know, you'll never be able to dance again." Every cell in my body railed against them. Dance was my great love and there was no way these injuries would beat me. I'd read lots about the power of positive thinking and I mustered up all my determination and self-belief.

When the physio gave me exercises to get my mobility back, I'd do them for four hours instead of 20 minutes.

It scares me to think that if I had believed the doctors, I might have given up. Instead, I was back dancing eight months later.

The death of my sister has driven me on ever since. Losing her left a huge hole in my life. As children we shared the girlish dream of becoming famous and changing the world. We thought if we could become well known, we could give something back to the world and use our fame to help others.

I still wanted to help others but, with Preepi gone, I'd have to do it on my own. One of the first things I did on leaving hospital was to organise fundraising concerts in her memory and that of our two friends. The money raised went to a mobile eye hospital. If I hadn't channelled all that shock and grief into something positive, I think I would have collapsed with depression.

All this happened half a lifetime ago and since then I've lived with the knowledge that, in this precious life, I really don't know how much time I've got. You can't imagine how much belief, drive and passion that's given me. It also gave me vision.

In the late Nineties, I set up Honey's Dance Academy with the intention of creating a nationwide Bollywood dance-training school. At the time, people tried to warn me off, saying my aspirations were too big or that nothing would come of it because people had never heard of Bollywood. But thanks to hard work - seven-day weeks and 16-hour days - handing out leaflets door-to-door and getting bank loans, my dream has taken off.

The school started with 22 students. By the end of the first year, this had increased to 300. Now I have 1,800 students throughout the country and I train a team of teachers.

There's no doubting my success.

I go to glamorous parties, drive a Porsche, and have been nominated for Businesswoman of the Year. I've been in Bollywood films such as Indian Babu, and I choreograph leading performances. I've danced in front of the Queen and Tony Blair.

But despite all this glamour, recognition and riches, my primary goal has always been to touch people's lives.

Bollywood dance is energetic, sexy, passionate and feisty. It's a great way of getting the vibrancy out of people.

Dance raises people's confidence.

It makes them fitter and healthier and improves their co-ordination.

My pupils develop teamwork and leadership skills by choreographing scenes. I've seen shy and hesitant dancers progress into first-class performers, who glow from head to toe with self-belief.

I also teach meditation, which is something I practise because I find it renews my passion and vigour and keeps me going through the hard times. I guide weekly sessions at an east London community centre.

Meditation is so restorative - it keeps my immunity strong. More than anything, it gives me a chance to collect my thoughts and reflect on just how connected we all are.

For more information on Honey Kalaria's Dance Classes, go to www. honeykalaria. com.

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