This Thurs­day, Hin­dus across T&T will ob­serve Di­vali–the cel­e­bra­tion of good over evil, light over dark­ness. On this lo­cal na­tion­al hol­i­day when Moth­er Lak­sh­mi is be­lieved to roam the Earth, be­stow­ing bless­ings of wealth and hap­pi­ness, many will pre­pare sump­tu­ous East In­di­an favourites, wear new clothes and adorn their homes and streets with beau­ti­ful dec­o­ra­tions, in­clud­ing thou­sands of eye-catch­ing deyas.

As usu­al in our melt­ing pot of cul­tures and peo­ples, oth­ers will al­so join in the fes­tiv­i­ties mak­ing the oc­ca­sion, “A Tri­ni Di­vali”.

This is al­so the ti­tle of a much-an­tic­i­pat­ed con­cert se­ries to be host­ed on Zee TV from No­vem­ber 1 to 4. And who bet­ter to con­vey the spir­it of Trinidad and To­ba­go than the Zee TV Shiv Shak­ti Dance Com­pa­ny.

As founder, artis­tic di­rec­tor and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er for Shiv Shak­ti, Michael Sal­ick­ram in­formed Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly, “A Tri­ni Di­vali” was con­cep­tu­alised by Roshan Per­sad and is a won­der­ful blend of East In­di­an film and de­vo­tion­al songs, film dances, de­vo­tion­al dances and steel­pan per­for­mances, and even fea­tures a mod­el­ling seg­ment.

Shiv Shak­ti has part­nered with the broad­cast­ers in the past to pro­duce lo­cal cul­tur­al pro­grammes, which gar­nered over 40,000 views world­wide last Di­vali and Christ­mas.

Ac­cord­ing to Sal­ick­ram, this year, the fo­cus is high­light­ing the tal­ent of the youth through the likes of singer Kait­lyn Sul­tan and pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo, and to con­tin­ue to pro­mote the di­verse cul­ture of this coun­try.

Founder, artistic director and choreographer of ZEE TV Shiv Shakti Dance Company, Michael Salickram.

Known for its bold use of colour, its vi­brance and in­no­v­a­tive chore­og­ra­phy, Shiv Shak­ti has dis­tin­guished it­self as a fore­most East In­di­an dance troupe in the Caribbean and be­yond since its in­cep­tion 34 years ago. Un­der Sal­ick­ram's lead­er­ship, the group has copped awards time and time again, with the dance gu­ru, as Sal­ick­ram is af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, show­ing him­self to be a force on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al land­scape of East In­di­an dance. In 2004, he was award­ed his most out­stand­ing ac­co­lade to date, the Cha­co­nia Sil­ver for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of cul­ture and the arts in T&T.

Break­ing bar­ri­ers that lim­it­ed dances to ei­ther clas­si­cal East In­di­an dance or dance recre­at­ed from Bol­ly­wood films, in the ear­ly years, Sal­ick­ram sought to de­vel­op some­thing unique­ly Trinida­di­an. He end­ed up with a con­tem­po­rary style, mixed with Clas­si­cal East In­di­an dance el­e­ments, Bol­ly­wood, folk and African in­flu­ences.

“I want­ed to cre­ate a style that could be In­do-Trinida­di­an, so styles were from dif­fer­ent dance tech­niques. Some dances would be a com­bi­na­tion of clas­si­cal and folk dances and some would be Bol­ly­wood style de­pend­ing on the oc­ca­sion. Like we say: Shiv Shak­ti has a dance for every oc­ca­sion,” Sal­ick­ram laughed.

“What I al­ways say is that when we are asked abroad es­pe­cial­ly, to show what our tal­ent is, we can­not go and dis­play the tal­ent of In­dia, Africa or any oth­er coun­try. We have to show them what our tal­ent is here which is chut­ney, ca­lyp­so, lim­bo, steel­pan.”

He proud­ly re­called how awed many peo­ple of South Ko­rea and In­dia were a few years ago af­ter Shiv Shak­ti did a pro­duc­tion in their coun­tries when they re­alised that “we in Trinidad have a cul­ture of our own.”

Vibrant colours and creative choreography are hallmarks of the Zee TV Shiv Shakti Dance Company.

Of course, there are oth­er fea­tures that make the more than 40 per­form­ing mem­bers of Shiv Shak­ti from ar­eas across Trinidad stand out.

Their keen­ness to re­search dance styles and de­sign cus­tom-made cos­tumes em­bell­ished with se­quins or gems or are hand-paint­ed, and their knack for do­ing their hair and make-up is a win­ning for­mu­la, said Sal­ick­ram. He just wrapped up par­tic­i­pa­tion in a doc­u­men­tary show­cas­ing Best Vil­lage stal­warts on TTT.

Hav­ing In­di­ra Sal­ick­ram tasked with stitch­ing cos­tumes, Gail Boodoos­ingh do­ing hand­work and Joyce­lyn Abra­ham man­ag­ing props, cos­tume de­sign and just about any­thing else al­so helps their process.

Based in Cou­va, Shiv Shak­ti boasts eight dance schools in T&T where the mem­bers are very fo­cused on ed­u­ca­tion and con­sid­er them­selves to be a “dance fam­i­ly,” Sal­ick­ram said.

Assistant artistic director, Anastasia Salickram, centre and members of the Zee TV Shiv Shakti Dance Company.

Sal­ick­ram felt that though Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions would be on a small­er scale due to the pan­dem­ic, the group would still ap­proach all their en­gage­ments, like their ap­pear­ances at the Di­vali Na­gar Site last week, with their cus­tom­ary high stan­dard.

The fes­ti­val usu­al­ly kin­dles pos­i­tiv­i­ty and uni­ty in com­mu­ni­ties in this coun­try. Help­ing to pre­pare del­i­ca­cies, clean­ing the house, burst­ing bam­boo, split­ting bam­boo to place and light deyas on in the yard and vil­lage in Princes Town where he grew up were some of Sal­ick­ram's fond mem­o­ries of Di­vali.

“It was so much fun go­ing to col­lect the mud to ac­tu­al­ly put on­to the bam­boo to hold the deyas (in place)…and play­ing with starlights. In those days we nev­er had fire­works, we had starlights. That was the clos­est thing to fire­works for us. Every­body would come out in the vil­lage and we would share what we made for the day–all veg­e­tar­i­an stuff–greet each oth­er and it was re­al­ly beau­ti­ful.

“We would sing songs, sit and talk about old times...kind of what you do for Old Year's night be­cause Di­vali is like a whole new be­gin­ning for Hin­dus. It's like a whole new year for us, so we re­al­ly look for­ward. You clean the house, var­nish the floor, so much ex­cite­ment, paint over the house, try to clean up be­fore 6 pm be­cause they say it's in­aus­pi­cious to be sweep­ing your house af­ter six on Di­vali Day, in fact through­out the year,” he re­called.

He al­so rem­i­nisced on the new out­fits every­one would wear for the oc­ca­sion, and the dri­ve or walk around the area to view dec­o­ra­tions and deyas, lament­ing that we were los­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of the cel­e­bra­tion that is tru­ly Trin­bag­on­ian be­cause of the rise of so­cial me­dia and the like.

He in­sist­ed that Shiv Shak­ti would nev­er lose its so­cial con­science as the dance com­pa­ny sup­ports many tem­ples and char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Ganesh Ut­sav Foun­da­tion and Isha Foun­da­tion.

Sal­ick­ram said he views Trinidad and To­ba­go as a small cul­tur­al vil­lage where we should en­cour­age oth­ers to reach for their dreams.

One of the great­est mo­ments for the on­ly ever male win­ner of dance at Mas­tana Ba­har (1992) and cham­pi­on of Scout­ing for Tal­ent in 2002, was mak­ing his de­but in the Bol­ly­wood film in­dus­try as a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er on the movie “Dul­ha Mil Gaya”. He added that he was al­so grate­ful to have rep­re­sent­ed T&T as part of a con­tin­gent for the World Cup 2006 in Ger­many when the So­ca War­riors qual­i­fied that time.

“It was an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. You would nev­er feel so proud to hold your na­tion­al flag and walk the streets. It was a phe­nom­e­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. And then to see when you're dri­ving through the streets, the flag of Trinidad and To­ba­go on all these apart­ment build­ings.”

De­spite his achieve­ments, he holds a unique dream for the coun­try and him­self close to his heart.

“One of my dreams ac­tu­al­ly is to rep­re­sent my coun­try in a Broad­way pro­duc­tion be­cause I be­lieve we have the re­sources here, we have the tal­ent. All we need is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pack­age a very good show...not just snip­pets of our cul­ture, but a full un­der­stand­ing of what we are.”

Sal­ick­ram had a mes­sage for T&T in the face of the COVID cri­sis. He felt that de­spite the set­backs, the peo­ple of this coun­try would ben­e­fit from work­ing to­geth­er to pick up the pieces.

He added, “De­spite the pan­dem­ic, there is al­ways hope and we al­ways have to look on the brighter side. At least our coun­try is not in war like some oth­er coun­tries. We're not liv­ing with that kind of fear. We should make the best of what we have. Some­times we wor­ry about what we need and nev­er ap­pre­ci­ate what we have.”

Re­call­ing “the Ganges and the Nile” uni­ty dance per­formed with the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ers which took both dance com­pa­nies on tours world­wide, Sal­ick­ram said peo­ple would see the dance and al­ways ask what was the se­cret of such a beau­ti­ful fu­sion.

“When Mal­ick and Shiv Shak­ti meet we are just a re­al big lov­ing fam­i­ly. They come over by us for Di­vali, we storm by them at Christ­mas. The se­cret is love,” he said.

Members of the Zee TV Shiv Shakti Dance Company strike a pose at the end of a performance.

Q&A with as­sis­tant artis­tic di­rec­tor and dancer of Shiv Shak­ti, Anas­ta­sia Sal­ick­ram

How long have you been a part of the group?

I was ac­tu­al­ly born in­to Shiv Shak­ti as my moth­er was the for­mer lead dancer of the com­pa­ny. I, my­self, start­ed danc­ing ever since I could re­mem­ber. I made my de­but ap­pear­ance with the per­form­ing com­pa­ny at the ten­der age of 11. To­day, I share the spot­light as one of the front­line dancers with the se­nior com­pa­ny as well as the lead dancer of the Swasti­ka dance group, which is a branch of our par­ent com­pa­ny. I al­so as­sist with the ad­min­is­tra­tive as­pect, chore­og­ra­phy, au­dio edit­ing, mar­ket­ing etc.

What do you en­joy most about be­ing a mem­ber of the group?

First­ly, it gives me an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue my first love which is dance, along with op­por­tu­ni­ties that may some­times seem unimag­in­able. In my opin­ion, dance is the ul­ti­mate form of de­vo­tion. You be­come one with your­self and all that sur­rounds you. Apart from the art form it­self, the bond cre­at­ed with our girls is what we con­sid­er a “sis­ter­hood”.

Please share any Di­vali re­flec­tions or mem­o­rable Di­vali mo­ments you have had with the group.

Back in 2018, I was in­deed priv­i­leged to rep­re­sent my coun­try at an in­ter­na­tion­al Di­vali pageant which was held in Guade­loupe. Apart from be­ing vic­to­ri­ous and cop­ping the first prize, the ex­pe­ri­ence was very re­fresh­ing as I was able to form life­long friend­ships with the oth­er con­tes­tants, shar­ing our di­verse cul­ture with those around the world.

Any words you would like to share about learn­ing from dance gu­ru, Michael Sal­ick­ram?

He’s not on­ly my un­cle but a men­tor; a source of in­spi­ra­tion. He has taught me many lessons like: “Noth­ing in life comes easy. Suc­cess can on­ly be achieved through ded­i­ca­tion and hard work.” But most im­por­tant­ly, he has taught me: “Be your­self, but be your best self.” To­day, I live by those sim­ple words and try to em­u­late those at­trib­ut­es in every­thing that I do: “Hu­mil­i­ty with majesty.”