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  June 22, 2002 
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Who's that girl?
Ayesha Dharker steals the show

Arthur J Pias

Ayesha Dharker is England's Shakalaka Baby.

Major tabloids with more than 3 million readers and broadsheets with about a million readers carried her picture from the sensational Shakalaka Baby dance sequence in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Bombay Dreams. Some used the photograph with reviews of the show that officially opened June 19 at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Some used it with a news report about the premiere.

While the likes of The Times carried a five-column photograph showing her with other dancers, The Daily Express carried a three-column colour picture that emphasised her ample cleavage. In the second part of the rousing dance item, Dharker also gets drenched, Bollywood style.

But surely there was more to her presence than her decolletage, vigorous body shakes and a few raunchy lines.

'Ayesha Dharker's vibrant performance is one of the few highlights of the musical,' declared The Times. The 'blissfully over-the-top' Shakalaka Baby number is 'gamely delivered' by her amid jets of water, the newspaper added.

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The Daily Express declared that the song has 'chart potential.' It added that the choreography by 'top Bombay hoofer' Saroj Khan and Anthony Van Laast made the show an enjoyable event.

'The big fountain dance --- the water flying about in this makes Singing In The Rain [the classic movie of the 1950s] look like a drought --- is a high point,' it added.

Ayesha Dharker in Bombay Dreams Many friends and acquaintances greeted Ayesha's parents, Indian columnist Anil and poet Imtiaz Dharker, during the intermission June 19.

"She stole the show," one man told Anil Dharker. "She is the star of the evening."

It is a big break from her movie and stage work, the father said. "If you have seen her in The Terrorist, and then in Ismail Merchant's Mystic Masseur, you know what I am talking about."

For Charles Spencer, the reviewer for Daily Telegraph 'the candyfloss pop' Shakalaka Baby number 'in which the whole cast is drenched by fountains' was the highlight of the show.

Dharker, who plays a movie actress and is billed in the show as Rani the Seductress, disappears in the second part of the show.

Many viewers complained that her part was cut short. Commenting on the lame ending of the show, one spectator declared: 'If they had any sense, they would have brought back the Shakalaka Baby number in the second half --- and that bright kid...

"Hmmm… What's her name?"

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