Calgary couple bring Bollywood dreams to Jack Singer stage

A unique mix of Bollywood dancing and acrobatics that creates a colourful cultural jigsaw puzzle.

A Bollywood-themed dance show at the Calgary Stampede?

Sparq Productions’ Vishal and Tania Malpuria think their dance showcase, One World Goes Bollywood, which they presented Saturday night at Jack Singer Concert Hall, would be a perfect fit at the Calgary Stampede.

It was the 14th edition of the showcase, hosted by CTV news anchor Camilla Di Giuseppe, which includes not just Bollywood but also circus performers, tribal belly dance, theatrical pieces and hip hop performers they have discovered across Calgary.

“We started this as a show just to get all the dancers, not only from the Bollywood genre, but from all other genres, to come together on one stage, promoting diversity and community,” said Tania, before Saturday’s show.

“They don’t realize the importance of how amazing talented Calgarians are,” said Vishal. “We have gotten comments, like, ‘it’s like a Vegas show!’

“It is like an amazing show,” Vishal added, “and our dream is to go to the Stampede for the 10 days. We could do exactly the same show every night for people to see all over the world what kind of talent we produce in Calgary.”

The show came about after the couple emigrated from India and discovered a diverse, talented dance community in the city that felt underexposed.

“We didn’t see anybody coming together as a as a dance community,” Vishal said, “We’ve been traveling all around the world with our concerts, doing shows, and (when) we saw the diversity over here, and when we saw the talent over here, we came out with a concept called One.

“One means everybody,” he said. “So our mission is to promote culture, first thing and second, promote talent in Calgary.”

Robin O’Grady discovered Bollywood dance “totally by accident” almost a decade ago and fell in love with it. She was one of the dancers performing Saturday night.

“It is incredibly fun and entertaining,” O’Grady said. “And we have such a great community of dancers and performers at Sparq Productions.

“We work together, we love each other -- and so being able to dance with them on that stage is just everything.”

With files from CTV’s Darren Wright