She is a choreographer, actor and director but above all, a free spirit who loves to soar and explore. Such is the nature of the sophisticated, soft- spoken, pretty and pert Joshinder Chaggar whose passion remains theatre and dance, while she continues experimenting with other genres of art as well.

We first saw her in Zeb and Haniya’s hit single Aitebar in 2008 and later on in Jal’s Morey Piya. Her fluid body movements and the ease with which she floated on the sets captured the audiences’ attention instantly. The screen loved her and so did the viewers. She choreographed a few award ceremonies, tribute shows and TV shows later on graduating on to choreographing celebrities for TV commercials. “Two celebrities that I have really enjoyed working with are Fawad Khan (for a cellular commercial) and Ahsan Khan (Sohail Rana Tribute, PTV Style Awards & Kaun Banega Meera Pati finale). What I loved about Fawad was that he just wanted to keep rehearsing till he perfected the moves. He actually wanted to learn and improve – a very rare attribute. And Ahsan is just a bundle of positive energy. I love creating high energy, fun dances for him because he does it with so much joy,” she emphatically shares, like any excited teacher whose pupil believes in excelling. And these two stars have excelled big time in their field.

What’s more, she has also danced in the song Jaane bhi do in the Bollywood movie Heyy Baby shot in Sydney.

A professional of repute, it is surprising to know that to be a choreographer was never Chaggar’s ambition, “And it still isn’t. I like to think of myself as a creative artist. I love to write, act, perform, dance and I love creating stories, and exploring personal conflicts and feelings through my work,” she shares candidly. “I’ve always loved to dance. But I come from a conservative family, and while growing up I never realised I had the option to pursue a career in dance,” she recalls with a gentle smile playing on her lips.

Hailing from a conventional Sikh family, Chaggar was well aware of the fact that her family would never allow her to take up dance as a career, so it was simply a passion and a hobby for this creative soul. “I am lucky, though, that my parents sent me to learn Bharatanatyam when I was 5 years old. As a form of dance, Bharatanatyam is my first love. I love the strength and sharpness it demands. Classical training at such a young age never leaves you,” and it sure has stayed on with Chaggar as is evident when one witneses one of her classically charged performances.

Born in Faridabad, Chaggar’s family moved to Nigeria when she was three years old. “My brother and I went to a private Indian school there.” Since dance was being taught as a subject at school, she got her first taste of basic Kathak and lots of folk dance. Training for Bharatanatyam started when she was five and continued for the next three years till the time the academy shut down.

Having spent early childhood in Nigeria, it was in early 90s that her family decided to move to Australia. “We migrated to Geelong, a little city outside Melbourne, Australia.” It was here that she studied dance as a subject in high school, “but the focus was mainly on jazz.” Once done with school, she got herself enrolled in a university in Melbourne, “There I found another brilliant Bharatanatyam Academy, where I restarted my training,” she recalls.

Around the same time she also undertook a one-year, full-time contemporary dance course at Deakin University in Melbourne. “That was my first introduction to contemporary dance and I totally fell in love with it since it’s such an expressive form.” In Sydney, she joined the Melange Dance Company, where she trained with a group of girls from Brazil, Cuba, Africa and Sri Lanka. “We trained in each other’s dance styles and performed amazing fusion dances all over Sydney. That was a really fun time and a massive learning curve for me,” she fondly reminisces. Hence, fusion remains a big part of Chaggar’s dancing as she has worked with dancers of many nationalities, which has left an indelible mark on her style.

One small incident that has stayed on in her mind since childhood, and probably also the inspiration for her becoming a choreographer, was “As little children, my brother and I once wanted to put up a dance performance at a cultural event. He also loves to dance and he’s very good [at it]. However, back then my brother said, ‘How are we going to make the steps?’ and I said ‘I’ll make them’ but he laughed it off and walked away. And we never did the dance.

In that little head of mine, I remember thinking, ‘Can’t everyone just make some steps?’ Maybe it’s very difficult. But it seemed very easy and natural to me. Over the years I realised that dance was my gift, something I could do with my eyes closed,” she says.

Her move to Karachi was somewhat planned as she had heard about the media boom in mid 2000s. And so, lock, stock and barrel she shifted to Karachi.

“Dance in Karachi is an interesting thing. Despite all the taboos and contradictions surrounding it, I don’t think I’ve met a single person who doesn’t absolutely love to dance here. I moved to Karachi in 2007, from Australia, full of apprehension. I started giving dance classes and to my utter amazement they were full from day one. I remember in 2008, I used to have a waiting list of over 50 people for the Bollywood dance classes which, themselves, had a magical quality. All this suppressed energy, this suppressed passion was being let out, and I began to believe that this was not just a mere dance or fitness class but, in fact, it was dance therapy (for myself included).

I taught at NAPA for 18 months and met some fantastic talent in my movement class, which inspired me to do Conversations in 2010 – a contemporary/experimental dance show at the Karachi Arts Council,” she shares. Ever since there have been a few installments of Conversations over the years; the latest one being Conversations 2016 – A Love Letter to Karachi, which was held recently at NAPA.

Conversations has been taking up much of her time recently, but other than that, “I have been writing a lot these days and doing a lot of yoga. The last couple of years I had been busy with this crazy experimental solo show that I created in August 2014, called She Flies with the Swallows. Its uniqueness is that there is no music, so it’s dancing in silence. I have been performing it at schools, colleges, festivals, and this continues even today. It’s a 20-minute performance and I am developing it into a 40-minute piece. It’s a show that is really close to my heart. It’s about freedom and what it really means to be free.”

These days Chaggar is involved in the making of a film. “It’s in development, so, too early to talk about that right now. As for future plans, well, honestly, there are none. This is very unlike me. I feel empty of plans right now. And I think I quite like this feeling,” signs off the pretty and petite dancer.