The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Kids sashay down the ramp in style

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Monday, Jan 21, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Kids sashay down the ramp in style

Staff Reporter

Participants at beauty pageant put up a professional display

— PHOTO: M. Karunakaran

Perfectly synchronised: Participants at the grand finale of the Little Royals - Prince and Princess of Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: Rap star attitudes and grown up body language, it was hard to digest that the participants on the ramp were merely kids.

A precocious and tender bunch of 20 boys and 20 girls, aged between eight and 13, strutted on the stage of the Music Academy here on Saturday for the grand finale of Little Royals-Prince and Princess of Chennai reality TV show aired on Chutti TV.

The forty had been groomed for the show by professionals, going through stringent workshops on confidence building, etiquette, style and language — not too unlike a Miss India or Mr. India aspirant. But, apart from the one obvious difference of age, this show was also a reality show, with each level aired on TV.

Conceptualised by SPAN, an upcoming event management company, the show had 250 entries to begin with. Of these, 100 were selected for the semi finals and 40 for the final. Puja Malhotra, one of the proprietors of SPAN, said: “The show is not just a beauty pageant. The kids will be judged on their overall confidence, talent and intelligence.”

Speaking about the month long-programme she said: “The children had great fun. They had the opportunity of interacting with stars including Madhavan and Dhanush, who even accompanied them on trips.”

The grooming certainly seemed to have worked, for except for a few child-like bloopers, the participants were professional and very un-child-like.

From a fairy tale set built to perfection on stage, the kids appeared for the first round dressed in Indian attire and gave their answers to the question “What is your favourite place in Chennai?” Many mentioned home or school, others picked the Marina beach or a famous mall. Some little girls, in true beauty pageant style, even mentioned their favourite orphanages.

After the Indian round the kids appeared in Halloween costumes to put up a fantastic dance performance, perfectly choreographed and almost too perfectly synchronised.

The judges for the contest, including dancer Aishwarya Dhanush and designer Sidney SS, would certainly have had a tough time deciding the winners. But for the kids, it seemed to be a cakewalk.One boy said his mother had told him that he did not need to win as long as he had fun. These kids certainly seemed to give having some childish fun a completely new spin.

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