Dance spurs Donna on

Gorgeous Donna Deepoosingh looked stunning in her white short pants and bronze-coloured top. A broad smile lit up her face, accentuating her star-like beauty. The award-winning dancer with the Bollywood looks is focused on pursuing a degree in business management and she is very involved in social work in her village. On a recent Mastana Bahar programme Donna, 22, stole the hearts of viewers with her intricate dance movements in which she impersonated actress Kareena Kapoor. The famous dance sequence titled Oh Re Kanchi adapted from the movie Ashoka was  performed with the “Kiss Natraj Dance Company” of Arima.

“I have been able to accomplish so much within a short space of time that I have to keep my feet on the ground and not walk on air,” she said laughing. When People visited her Chaguanas home Donna was doing her laundry as well as catching up on homework. “This is the only way I could manage my time. And to me proper time management has brought me the success I need,” she said. She began dancing at age six with Susan Mohip in Chaguanas. Grandmother Haradaya Rampersad would hold her hand and take her to dance classes. Later she joined with the Kiss Natraj to continue her stint in dancing. Employed as a teller at the Hindu Credit Union Arima branch, Donna says dance has spurred her to greater achievements. “When you dance it boosts your confidence and you want to achieve more in everything you do. When you perform, you get this feeling that you are important and you then have this urge to be excellent in everything else,” she said. However, while she loves the stage for her it is just a performance. Her commitment is to her job and studies.

While growing up at O’Meara Road, Arima, Donna observed that some youths had lost their ways and had no mission in life. However, she has words of encouragement for young people who have lost direction in life and are just waiting on time —to get a job or to get married. “You cannot afford to sit around doing absolutely nothing just waiting for the next job. Nothing ventured; nothing gained. You have to leave the comfort zone you are in and get to the library or any place and start doing research so that you can find a way out of your situation,” she advised. Donna entered the Miss Naturally Fair contest in 2002 and was first runner up. This took her to the US where she competed in the Miss Mastana USA contest in which women of  East Indian descent from around the world participated. There, the producers mistook her for the beauty representing India. “The producers were shocked at the kind of talent we have in this country. I saw the audience go in a trance when I entered the stage. I felt really good about representing my country as an East Indian woman,” she said. She was also a finalist in the Miss India World Caribbean Pageant which was held in Couva last year. Dance and beauty contests are her particular fancies.
 
“This is my hobby. I am not going to make money out of this to survive. At the end of the day I have to get a good-paying job to live comfortably,” she stated. She noted that it was the promoters of shows who made all the money while the performers suffered a lot. The few performers who survive through their art, she noted, must travel abroad in order to get the money they need for survival in the country. She hates it when all a woman wants to do is marry and settle down. “Every woman should have a skill. She must seek to educate herself to the best of her ability so that he can hold down a full-time job and manage life on her own. This way even if she finds a man who wants to take care of her, he will respect her for her ability.” Donna’s goal is to get into chartered accounting. While she enjoys her current job she wants to be self-employed one day. “I am working towards achieving my goals one by one. Even though I lead a hectic life I try to remain focussed so that I could achieve my goals.”