Exporting performing arts

Angu RAJENDRAN

Music is their life. Singing is their passion. Andre and Dinali David work from Monday to Sunday with their Performing Arts School or Mary Ann David’s singing academy where they train kids from age four through twenty two.

Twenty Eight year old Andre David – Mary Ann David’s only child who is an innately talented performer and singer has started on his dream project with his wife Dinali – The David Academy of Performing Arts. He wants to bring Broadway style Musical Theatre to Sri Lanka. Andre with his soft spoken voice and steely determination and Dinali with her vivaciousness and goal-setting views, complement each other perfectly as they speak about their plans to take Sri Lankan musical talent to International levels.

Dinali, who is one of the topmost classical voices in the country, her pure voice having won her accolades at the Young Soloists Concert in 2004, is completely consumed with the dream of ‘training Sri Lankan voices’ to the standard of Covent Garden.

Voice

‘A voice is a voice – many of our singers have voices as good as, if not better than the International professional singers. It is just that we all need continuous and rigorous training,’ says Dinali with a lot of passion. ‘Most of the time, the attitude of parents of young singers is such that they tell their children to ignore their inborn talent.

‘You have a good voice. Ignore it. You got to go out there and make money not music is what most youngsters are told. In the West, this is not the case. The number of opportunities available to professional singers is many. Here, a good talented singer can only sing as a hobby. We both, Andre and I, are determined to change that mind-set’, says Dinali. Dinali is the driving force behind Andre. Having met at ANC, despite the fact that Dinali was Mary Ann’s student from the age of nine years, Andre and Dinali not only train Mary Ann’s pupils but have also started their own academy where a student can sing and act and play instruments as well. Students can even learn beat boxing at this academy.

They get the best teacher in the country for beat boxing as a visiting lecturer to their academy. Beat boxing is apparently the greatest phenomenon in the musical world right now. Beat boxing is the ability to produce many musical sounds from one person’s mouth simultaneously by making use of the many depths in the throat and mouth.

Exporting talent

‘All our singers needed to go abroad to make it big,’ says Andre. We are going to change all that. We are going to show mums and dads that their talented children can actually avail of the opportunities in Sri Lanka and we can even export our shows to nearby India.

The DAPA school has sixty young students within barely a year of its existence. They do a commercial programme on Max TV. This half hour entertainment programme has about fifteen singers trained by Andre David performing every week.

Standing ovation

As Dinali says ‘Andre can make a really hopeless non-singer learn to pitch and keep a tune and sing like they have never sung before. I can make a good singer better. I can help a good singer find his or her range and look way beyond their abilities.’

Both Andre and Dinali were in Chennai with a performance of ‘The Best of Broadway’ - a musical production such as never seen in Chennai before. ‘The standing ovation and the tears in the eyes of the audience was proof positive that we were a hit,’ said Andre. They had been rather anxious as India is well known for their entertainment and entertainers whether singing or dancing or theatre.

Chennai

‘But they are simply not used to Western performances and they loved it.

The audience ranged from fifteen year old teenagers to sixty year old – grandmothers. But they all loved us. We have never before been received even by a Sri Lankan audience with such wild abandon,’ said Andre. This performance in Chennai has spurred the Davids to get on speedier with their Performing Arts Theatre Academy.

They are convinced that they will be able to export not their singers but their songs to nearby India with their performances.

The Musical Tours and Shows in India beckon us and we are getting our singers geared for that,’ says Andre.