It’s 8pm in the evening and I am sitting in the office at Ulsoor, surrounded by raw materials for accessories and their components – over 2100 (yes, two thousand one hundred) of them that we have to make for the upcoming Madame Mystique Marvelous Machine production. I am cutting the comb that goes as part of the headpiece for the Pet Groomers.
Some of the students attending an evening class were in the office earlier, lending a helping hand while they waited for their class to begin. Everywhere I look in the office, I see everyone , regardless of their main duties ,working on accessories. Every surface is covered with glitter, which I carry home on myself every evening too.
Combs for Pet Groomers’ Head Accessory Cut, Painted, and ready to be assembled
While it’s meditative to trace and cut over 60 combs from foam, I can’t help but notice the amount of manpower and effort that goes into making accessories, which is just a small yet important part of the show. Just as I’m absorbed in this, Anjali walks in saying we have an issue with one of the costumes (which I won’t mention here so you don’t worry). The vendor, despite several commitments, hasn’t started making them yet and he has overshot all deadlines. We sat down outside in the hallway, going through the status of each costume as well as the workloads of every vendor that is producing them. Some of the vendors (now partners) go back a long way with us and we have forged a partnership which despite the trials and tribulations has stood the test of time. It is a very unorganized market and we often face production challenges like manpower issues, festival periods, budget overruns, shortages in materials, to name a few.
We quickly assess the situation and after a few calls decide to shift the production from one vendor to another. While we depend on our partners to produce the costume, we have an internal team taking care of design, sampling, sourcing ,measurements, managing the production , trials and alterations, handover and the logistics of running this operation. I would like to say we have an army of a team, but what we don’t have in numbers, we make up with sheer hard work.
As I complete the combs and Harsh packs a bag of accessories material for me to take home and make them later in the day, I can’t help but think how just 7 months ago, this production was just an idea and now it has consumed every aspect of our operation.
Everything is connected
Design variations for the Mechanics’ costumes
This show was an idea presented in a little book by our senior student and National Youth Ballet artist, Maya Haridas. The show was loosely called “When I Grow Up,” tracing the journey of a group of children going after dreams different from the traditional careers we tend to follow in life. Miss Elina was the inventor or career analyst who had a lab setup with gadgets and gizmos. The story followed the trajectory of different children using the gizmo to find out what they are going to be when they grow up. Inadvertently, Maya had put her finger on something most of us don’t like to acknowledge. As parents, we have all felt the pull to guide our children toward careers that seem safer or more financially secure.
Personally, I was lucky enough to find a passion for technology – computer programming in particular – and how that shaped my career in IT before I committed solely to building The Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet. Our vision is to create the National Ballet of India company as well as a full-time vocational performing arts school, standing with one of the best in Asia.
As the teachers sat down to discuss further, they came up with the idea of Madame Mystique, played by Miss Elina (of course) , whose whimsical Marvelous Machine helps children discover their unique talents and navigate their journey through self-doubt, parental and societal expectations, and fear of failure.
Design of the Machine
When they shared this concept with me, something clicked. I am an early adopter of AI and have seen it evolving in leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. By using it for various purposes, including generating virtual worlds for backdrops that adorn our shows, I have realized that people mostly use AI to get quick answers and solutions. The real power of AI, however, lies in using it creatively – where the human behind the keyboard gives enough context and pushes the boundaries of the AI models. AI doesn’t replace human creativity, at least not yet, but when used creatively, it leverages what we can achieve.
“So the machine became the symbol of AI. Madame Mystique and the children became the unlimited creative potential that, instead of fearing the machine, leverages its power to expand human experiences.”
14 weeks for 14 Chapters
First chapter of the series
Traditionally, most of our communication around the show reaches parents directly via WhatsApp groups and circulars. The students learn choreography in classes, and their first real glimpse of the production comes during rehearsals and costume trials. But in one of our brainstorming sessions, we realized we had a problem: we were only talking to the adults.
The discussion turned to something that concerns many of us – how early children are now exposed to social media and screens, and how this shapes their expectation for instant gratification. More troubling was our observation about the education system. Schools are still teaching students to memorize information and follow prescribed steps, exactly the kind of work that AI now does faster and more accurately than humans. The jobs these children are being prepared for – data entry, basic analysis, routine problem-solving , coding etc are already disappearing.
I’ve watched this happen in my own field. Entry-level programming positions that used to train new graduates are vanishing as AI handles code generation and debugging. Customer service roles, junior accounting positions, even paralegal work – entire career entry points are being automated away. Yet children are still being taught to compete for these disappearing opportunities.
“Meanwhile, the skills that remain uniquely human – creative problem-solving, emotional intelligence, collaborative leadership, persistence through failure – these aren’t taught in classrooms. You can’t learn resilience from a textbook or develop confidence by taking a test. These qualities emerge from sustained practice, from working toward something difficult with others, from failing and trying again until you succeed.”
Last chapter of the series
This is what happens naturally in ballet training, though children rarely realize it. When a student struggles with a combination for weeks before finally mastering it, they’re developing the same persistence that will serve them when they face challenges no algorithm can solve. When 20 dancers must move in perfect synchronization, they’re learning collaborative precision that goes far beyond following choreography.
The idea of putting physical storybooks directly into children’s hands, suddenly made perfect sense. Here was a way to extend our teaching philosophy beyond the studio, to reach children during their daily lives with stories that reinforced exactly what they were learning through dance – that meaningful achievements require sustained effort, that problems become opportunities for creative solutions, self-doubt is natural, that individual excellence contributes to collective success.
How February Becomes September
The seed for this show was planted in February, seven months ago. What seems like a reasonable timeline becomes a different reality when you’re coordinating 600 individual journeys through a single story.
By March, teachers are creating close to 20 pieces of choreography – not just individual dances, but pieces that must flow together to tell Madame Mystique’s story while accommodating the skill levels of 4-year-olds dancing alongside teenagers. Each piece has to work in isolation during regular classes and as part of a larger narrative during rehearsals and performance. It’s like writing a novel where every chapter must also function as a complete short story.
Each piece of music is thoughtfully selected to add to the storytelling
Miss Elina becomes the company DJ, spending hours listening to compositions, back and forth with Miss Yana, editing tracks to match the emotional arc of each scene. A piece of music might be perfect for the magical transformation sequence, but too long for the attention span of younger dancers. Every edit affects the choreography, which may affect the timing of everything else. This needs to be locked early on and it’s complex and time consuming.
April through June brings the technical complexity that would overwhelm most professional productions. Costume measurements can’t be finalized until children return from summer break because we’re designing for bodies that grow inches between fittings. Fabric sourcing for 600 costumes means ordering quantities that exhaust local suppliers. When our usual vendor for a specific material runs short, we’re sourcing from Chennai or Mumbai or Delhi, which changes delivery timelines and affects everything downstream.
Meanwhile, the 14-week storybook series demands its own production schedule. Writing stories that advance the plot while teaching specific life lessons, entertain children across a 12-year age span, and connect to ballet choreography requires countless iterations. Each chapter goes through review sessions where we’re asking: Does this reinforce the resilience lesson? Will the 4-year-olds understand the illustrations? Does Omar’s ice skating challenge connect to what they’re learning in class about persistence?
The printing and distribution logistics alone resemble a small publishing operation. Every Monday for 14 weeks, 600 books must reach the right children at the right locations. Miss a week and the story continuity breaks. Print too early and you can’t incorporate feedback from previous chapters.
By July, we’re running parallel operations that would challenge any project manager: costume production with Gantt charts tracking vendor deliveries, rehearsal schedules coordinating students from multiple locations, storybook deadlines that can’t slip because children are waiting for the next chapter, and accessory production that’s moved into our homes because there simply isn’t enough workspace.
By August, we’re coordinating with the professional lighting designers and finalizing sourcing equipment that rivals commercial productions – floor-to-ceiling LED walls that will transform the theater into Wonderbrook along with additional power infrastructure. We always hire an external auditorium that can accommodate both the technical requirements and the audience size. We also lock in two separate teams of professional photographers and videographers to record the show and pass it on to you for your memories.
August and September also bring Sunday rehearsals at an external venue, where students from different centers work together for the first time. They learn stage entries and exits, understand how their individual pieces connect to the larger story, and practice the collaborative precision that will be essential on performance day. The little ones rise to meet these professional standards in ways that continue to surprise us.
Our brochure designer, Vijaya Aswani’s (Spreefirit) initial drafts.
Parallel to this, we’re collaborating with an illustrator for the souvenir brochure,also fielding constant questions from parents, and writing detailed circulars with instructions so everything runs smoothly. Each parent query requires careful response because one misunderstanding can cascade into confusion across multiple families.
On the day of the show, the full technical rehearsal becomes essential – not just for the performers, but for the army of parent volunteers coordinating backstage logistics. These volunteers (parents of the students in your class) manage makeup schedules, ensure 600 children reach their marks on time, and safely shepherd performers between stage and green rooms. We hire additional security that coordinates crowd control for our family audience. A detailed plan is also worked out that manages securely receiving the child for the technical rehearsals and handing them back to the parents after the show.
This is how February’s seed becomes a thriving living September’s forest, through months of simultaneous creative and logistical problem-solving that pushes everyone beyond what they thought possible.
This raises the question.
Why Do We Do What We Do ?
SNIPPET FROM THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CURSED CRYSTAL (2023)
This question rears its head every show year. Few parents sometimes ask whether it’s worth going through this process – why does the TLFCB team put itself through this all-encompassing massive effort every other year? Why can’t we dial it down? Why push the children to practice? Why so many rehearsals ? Why not keep it like a recital with basic costumes, class uniforms, simple stage lighting, no props or backdrops?
Sometimes, in those vulnerable moments when we’re inundated with work, we ask ourselves the same question. When vendors miss deadlines, we are working late nights to get the contrast levels right for the backdrop images so that the LED wall doesn’t overpower the dancers in the show, when I’m cutting my sixtieth foam comb at 8pm – the simpler path seems appealing, but only for a moment.
But then we remember what we witnessed at the last show, and the show before that. We see 4-year-olds who learn to wait patiently for their entrance cue while teenagers around them execute complex formations. We watch children who struggle with confidence in regular classes transform on stage when they realize hundreds of people came to watch them perform. We observe the moment when individual dancers stop thinking about their own steps and start moving as part of something larger than themselves.
The answer that beats in our hearts is that we would not have it any other way for these children. We exist to shape the future through ballet – not just through what we teach in class, but through the impact these experiences have on their understanding of what’s possible when humans work together toward excellence.
These children are entering a world where artificial intelligence handles routine tasks, where traditional career paths are vanishing, where the ability to collaborate creatively will determine who thrives and who merely survives. When they step onto that stage with professional lighting and setup that outshines an average production, they’re not just performing choreography , they’re experiencing what it feels like to be part of something that requires the best from everyone involved.
We work hard to give students the best we can create for them and not just get by. We believe they deserve professional-level production values because they’re developing professional-level discipline, commitment, and collaborative skills. Every technical rehearsal teaches adaptability. Every rehearsal teaches practice, collaboration and attention to detail. Every weekly storybook teaches persistence through difficulty.
Pre-Primary Ballet Students in The Curious Case of the Cursed Crystal (2023)
“Could we simplify? Absolutely. But we’ve learned that children rise to meet the standards we set. When we expect excellence, they deliver it in ways that surprise and inspire us. When we provide them with the infrastructure for magic, they create it.”
These 600 young performers are becoming Madame Mystiques themselves, brilliant creators, resilient, collaborative humans who understand that meaningful achievements require sustained effort and teamwork
That’s worth every late night, every logistical challenge, every moment of controlled chaos.
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