ISBN: 9780143062080    Publisher: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd Year of publishing: 2006     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 80        Language: English

Jairaj Parekh and his wife Ratna, ageing Bharatanatyam dancers, are engaged in finding a substitute mridangam player to accompany their daughter Lata at her performance at a high-profile dance festival. Lata, in the meantime, nervously awaits the meeting between her parents and Viswas, the young man she wishes to marry. When the four meet, and in the conversations and discussions that follow, the fissures in the relationship between Jairaj and Ratna begin to explode into high-strung battles which lead back to their own youth and the tragedy that lies at the heart of their discord. The younger couple have their own issues to contend with: the obvious mismatch between the two sets of parents, the arguments over Lata's career as a dancer after marriage and, most unsettling of all, Lata's attempt to balance her parents' ambition with her own needs and desires. A brilliant study of human relationships and weaknesses framed by the age-old battle between tradition and youthful rebellion, "Dance Like a Man" has been hailed as one of the best works of the dramatic imagination in recent times.
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In 1986, Mahesh Dattani wrote his first full-length play, Where There's a Will, and from 1995 he has been working full-time in theatre. In 1998, he set up his own theatre studio dedicated to training and showcasing new talents in acting, directing and stage writing. Dattani is also a film-maker and his films have been screened in India and abroad to critical and public acclaim. His film Dance Like a Man won the award for the Best Picture in English awarded by the National Panorama. In 1998, Dattani won the Sahitya Akademi award for his book of plays Final Solutions and Other Plays, thus becoming the first English language playwright to win the award.
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