Gulabo Sapera

Gulabo Sapera (aka Gulabo or Dhanvantri; born 1973) is a dancer from Rajasthan, India.[1]

The President, Shri Pranab Mukherjee presenting the Padma Shri Award to Smt. Gulabo Sapera, at a Civil Investiture Ceremony, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi on 28 March 2016

Personal life

Gulabo was the seventh child of her parents. She was buried Alive within an hour of her birth but later rescued by her aunt. She was born in 1973 in the nomadic Kalbaliya community.

A legendary folk artist, GULABO not only got the flamboyant dance style Kalbaliya, conceptualized and choreographed by herself, identified across the globe but got her community, a nomadic one, a never imagined recognition. Battling all the odds that life thrust upon her she proceeded with courage and perseverance for the honor of the nation, her community and her family. The dance form, she introduced, is today one of the major featuring the state of Rajasthan. Born in kalbeliya tribe in Ajmer as Dhanvanti, her parents buried her on pressure from the community despite their unwillingness due to her being 4th girl child but she was lucky to be exhumed alive after almost six hours on the insistence of her Aunt. Her father started taking her along in a very tender age for the snake show on the roads, their staple profession and growing up with the snakes, she started dancing like the snakes. A style, which was quite a unique and unprecedented one. Given her rather maniacal passion for the dance, she continued practicing surreptitiously in the isolated places despite the objections of her community. Once she was taken to the holy shrine of khwaza moinuddin chishti, where the shrine blessed her with a rose flower and here she got the new name "GULABO".

The turning point of her life came when she was dancing with her community women in a fair at Pushkar at the age of seven yrs in 1981. There she was noticed by representatives of Rajasthan tourism department, Miss Tripti Pandey & Mr Himmat singh who were quite enthralled by the gyrations and suppleness of her dance. There she was offered to dance before a group of foreigners, which she did after a rigorous convincing and won enormous appreciation. This public performance further enraged her community and this time the infuriated community panchayat slapped her family with social boycott. Unable to beat this resistance, she finally shifted to Jaipur with the help of her family and her promoters. In 1985, she got an offer to join a culture crew for the USA, which again was opposed heavily, but overcoming this opposition, she finally left for USA with her father passing away just a day before her departure, But for the fulfillment of her father's and families dream and for the recognition of her community and art, she flew to USA and remained in Washington for two months performing continuously. Impressed by the dance form, she had an offer to live there permanently and teach the dance but she refused. The intervention of the then prime minister, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, on whose wrist she tied a symbolic Rakhi, could not budge her and he had to give in to her patriotic sentiments and interest in teaching the art in her own country. Since then, she tied the holy thread on his wrist every Raksha Bandhan until he died.

This Overeas performance in the US established her as an Ambassador of the folk heritage of Rajasthan. President of the All India Kalbaliya community, today she is treated as an institution, a hallmark of the state with a plethora of national and international awards. A visiting faculty at institutions in countries like DENMARK (Copenhagen). FRANCE(Paris). She have visited 165 countries. She wishes to set up a dance school in Pushkar, amidst the people of her own community. She has also taken up the cause of educating the girls and boys of her community and working tirelessly for the image makeover of the community through the GULABI SAPERA SANGEET SANSTHAN, set up by her. In 2011, Gulabo featured in the reality television show Bigg Boss as contestant no. 12.[2] She was honored with Countries 4th highest civilian Padmashri award from the president of India Mr Pranab Mukherjee.

[3] Gulabo Sapera became a celebrity dancer later in life.[4]

A book is also written by Thierry Robin and Véronique Guillien in French i.e. Gulabi Sapera, danseuse gitane du Rajasthan, means Gulabo sapera, the gypsy dancer from Rajasthan.

Awards

The Government of India awarded her the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2016.[5]

Television
Year Shows Role Channel Notes
2011Bigg Boss 5Celebrity ContestantColors TVEvicted Week 2, Day 14
gollark: WinDOS is horribly bloated.
gollark: Of course it does.
gollark: For one thing, it's *useful*.
gollark: It's not particularly eso-.
gollark: We should make a package-manager-based esolang. Somehow.

References
  1. "गुलाबो ने कहा, नहीं करेंगे सरकारी कार्यक्रम" (in Hindi). Dainik Bhaskar. 22 April 2011. Retrieved 4 October 2011.
  2. "Jonty Rhodes and Navjot Singh Sidhu may still join Bigg Boss 5". DailyBhaskar.com. 3 October 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  3. Thierry Robin and Véronique Guillien (2000) Gulabi Sapera, danseuse gitane du Rajasthan, ISBN 2-7427-3129-6
  4. Soparrkar, Sandip (28 September 2017). "Kalbeliya dancer who charms". The Asian Age. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  5. "Padma Awards 2016". Press Information Bureau, Government of India. 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
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