My Life as an Extra

She’s the girl merging into the background. Yet she trains rigorously and breathes professionalism.

Being an ‘extra’, the artist on the fringes, can be quite a task. I’m the girl who fills the faceless crowd in a music video, while the singer schmoozes the model. I’m the girl whose head gets cut off in shots. If I’m lucky, I will get to wear a shiny cloak in the last row in the musical Troy, and dance like phosphorescent sea waves, while Hector bids goodbye to his wife Andromache. It’s a heart-wrenching scene, as Hector, too, like the audience, knows that Troy is doomed, and that’s the last time he will see her.

Life is tough being an extra. You’re caught between professionalism and daydreaming. Struggling to keep invisible in the darkness beside the spotlight. Even your struggles remain invisible. Like all artistes, we too, require rigorous training and inspiration, and suffer from artistic insecurities.

My career as an extra began when my friend, who was directing a music video on a shoestring budget, desperately sought fillers-in for her nightclub sequence. For free. With good intentions, I washed and conditioned my hair, wore a slinky dress at 9 am and showed up. Only to be insulted by the make-up dudes, who thought my hair needed re-doing and caked my face like the Joker from Batman.

If watching life pass by is a hobby of yours, then I would recommend the patient, thought-provoking job of an ‘extra’. On the music video set that day, while I tried to catch up with my favourite author Naguib Mahfouz, some models snorted a line of coke or two (for inspiration, I’m assuming). As your role increases, the pressure to be inspired does too.

When it was time for my two minutes of fame—a shot where I try to seduce the singer away from his lady love—I screwed it up royally. I had to sing the following lyrics in a seductive way: ‘O mere raja, paas to aaja, dono milke naachenge.’ (Oh my king, come closer, let’s dance together.) My laughter got worse each time I’d repeat the lyrics, and I just couldn’t get myself to look into his eyes and sing those words with a straight face. In the end I was in splits, with tears in my eyes.

My second experience as an extra was again when one of my dear friends, a filmmaker was ditched at the last moment by an actress. And that’s how I played the headless mother. Headless because the film is from a child’s perspective, and anything above the kid’s eye level, was cut off. I’d gone clubbing the night before the shoot, and it ended badly with my partner getting into an accident at 4 am. So when I entered the shoot in high heels and a sari the next day, I was a zombie. The first few scenes were alright: I had to hold the child’s hand and take him to his grandfather. The next one, though, tipped the balance over. In this scene, we were to discover that the grandfather is dead. And in the camera, we see my back as I walk across, kneel down, hug the child and cry.

Irony is an overused, often abused, word. But I can’t think of any other word that can describe the horror of shooting and re-shooting that scene, only to find the cinematographer complain my back couldn’t emote. He couldn’t see the tears that rolled down my eyes. My heart lay with an injured boy, and I had skipped seeing him to come for the shoot.

Every extra has her day. In August, I applied for a fellowship that gave people a chance to follow their dreams. I got through, and went to Turkey, living as part of a dance troupe, Fire of Anatolia, for three months as a dancer.

The first few days were tempered insecurities and home sickness. I was too fat, too ungraceful, too shy, too amateurish to be in Istanbul with great dancers from the world. It felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was living someone else’s dream.

Have you ever silently mouthed the lyrics while a song plays? So while you sing, it is the voice of the singer that emerges? Bit like what our heroes and heroines do, make-believe song and dance; shot over a span of days, edited into a few minutes. This, in a way, sums up my relationship with dancing. I love it. I groove all the time, be it in meetings, on the pot, in the car, under the shower, flirting, eating. I live vicariously through the great dance I see around. The only time the music stops in my head is when I’m crying or fighting. That’s when make-believe ceases.

When you meet me, you’re bound to notice the straight face I maintain. If I were to crack a joke or admonish you for your behaviour, you wouldn’t be able to decipher it from my face. I live in my head, and express myself through words. Which doesn’t make for a great dancer or actor. Feeling emotions and expressing them are two different things. Expressing them with words, and expressing them with your body even more different.

Which makes being part of a world class dance troupe like Fire of Anatolia a challenge at best, stressingly stressful at worst. I must begin at the beginning, while everyone else is close to the top. I must learn to move in rhythm. I must learn to look at myself in the mirror. I must feel like the King of the World.

“I want to see Shubhangi in the steps. I want you to use your arms, stretch them out. I don’t see you in your dance,” complains my choreographer-instructor Muge. And I smile back at her. The simplicity and enormity of her demand stumps me amidst the dance routines.

Muge is one of the lead dancers and assistant choreographers here. She is the girl with the winning smile, wooed by rows of dancers on stage. In other scenes, though, she is also the masked girl in full black in the last row. Fire of Anatolia is probably the first glamorous group I have witnessed with an almost Gandhian style of working. Apo, who is currently handling the entire show here in Antalya, orchestrates everything with a mobile phone, walkie talkie, and a broom in case it rains. Two days ago, when it rained while the troupe was performing outdoors, Apo was among the sweepers who swabbed the stage in the interval.

I could give you a million similar instances. Sinem, the gorgeous lead bellydancer, has entire sequences dedicated to her moves in each show, including Troia. After completing those scenes, though, she adorns the common costumes and joins her dancing mates in enacting the phosphorescent waves, while Hector bids good-bye to his love.

So when I say, ‘if I’m lucky I will adorn a shiny cloak and play the part of phosphorescent sea waves in Troia,’ I mean it. Really. This is a dance troupe where no role is small enough for anyone. Being an extra is not a consolation prize. It’s a role in itself. Which requires practice, hard labour and, yes, inspiration. Extras suffer from artistic insecurities too. They too might feel fat and ungraceful on days. And, no, that doesn’t mean we have a low self-esteem. You don’t have to be in the spotlight to feel special. I know my family loves me as much off stage as it does on stage. And my friends have always stood by me.

So if watching life pass by is a hobby of yours, then I’d recommend the patient, thought-provoking job of an ‘extra’. I’m always running late. As a journalist, I pass deadlines, and as a dancer I’m almost always a step or two behind. But when I see the rest of team waltzing ahead, it is inspiring. It inspires me to catch up, to try harder and join them. In case I can’t, I just give up. Sometimes, it’s either not worth keeping up or too plain difficult. Which is fine too. As my mother puts it, “Eat good food and relax. Tomorrow is a new day.”

(Shubhangi Swarup calls herself a disorganised journalist and gullible activist with her own brand of dancing. When she says something with conviction, people laugh, but when she cracks a joke, the laughter dies. Read her daily adventures here)

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