In Gurgaon’s unreasonably hot late spring, the Kingdom of Dreams is under construction. Hemmed in by traffic signals and business hotels, work clips on at a furious rate. The baroque contours of this incredible-India-meets-the-World’s-Fair fantasy are filled with artisans, masons and painters putting the last touches on this piece of high architectural drama. This kingdom, for now, is still a factory of dreams. Out of the shimmering heat, Isha Sharvani advances almost miraculously, picking her way through loops of wire and fallen planks of wood. Her dancer’s grace is perhaps the most celebrated thing about her, but she is not the gazelle-like, willowy creature that defines some conceptions of the dancer; as she walks towards us, quick and purposeful in her sporty skirt and Puma walking shoes, Isha is less ballerina, more athlete.

In her earliest interview with Verve, as a 19-year-old on the eve of her cinema début in Subhash Ghai’s Kisna (2005), Isha declared, “Acting has enhanced the emotional content of my dance. I would like to take both these genres to greater heights and star in a musical.” I greet her with these words, and she takes a long moment to laugh it out. She has been here since late last November as the lead artiste in the musical extravaganza due to open on the main stage of the Kingdom of Dreams complex at the end of summer. Surprise, surprise – it’s a musical. “It’s lovely when destiny kind of comes your way,” she says. “This is an awesome chance to bring in everything that I’ve learned over the last 12 years of my career. I get a chance to act. I get a chance to dance, to do aerial work, showcase my martial arts skills - the whole setup.”

‘The whole setup’ is easier to imagine than describe. It’s possible to exhaust the word ‘unusual’ when describing almost everything about her history, her education, and her résumé. Perhaps the semi-roving childhood, with home being an ashram in rural Kerala, was inevitable: her parents are dancer Daksha Seth and composer-musician Devissaro. But what of her training? Unlike so many performers and the children of performers, Isha began dancing fairly late in life. “I started getting left behind when my parents started travelling, so I thought I’d give it a shot,” she says, tongue-in-cheek. “But seriously, at 13 a lot of things came together. I told my parents I wanted to start but not to do it half-heartedly. Let me join you full-time for a year, and study on my own. They said okay, as long as I was willing to consider going back to school a year later if I dropped it. But I stuck it out and I did decently.” ‘Decently’ meant dancing from 5.30 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon, with no respite from schoolwork afterwards. “At 13 it’s very difficult, but I was motivated. Once I started performing – the motivation increased, because I started travelling – I love travelling – and I would see dancers and think, oh my God. Where are they, and where am I? That kept pushing me. Besides, at festivals every company represents their country, and I thought if I was going to represent India, I had better do it well.”

She sits at the make-up table as we chat, her expressions unaffected by the small regiments of hairdryers, lip gloss and foundation brought out to arm her for this photoshoot. The style mantra for the day is glam to the gills, a fact charmingly offset by her businesslike, clean-cut vest and skirt. She likes to play dress-up, she says. Perhaps it’s inevitable when your wardrobe is as full of workout gear as hers is. “I’m always lazy about make-up,” Isha says. “I’d rather be in a yoga session or something.” She doesn’t resist it, she affirms, picking out a bottle of cherry-coloured nail-polish and painting her fingernails as the curlers are put to work. “It’s just that I get bored.” She looks up and smiles. “It’s funny that I always play glamorous characters in my films.”

It is funny. Those films form a slim and idiosyncratic roster for an actor of her gifts. The luminous poise of her screen presence may spill over from her aura onstage; on film it transmutes into a reserved confidence that hints at screen-goddess-to-come. It is a quality to cherish in idolatrous Bollywood, and it is what makes her hypnotic to watch in her much-acclaimed role in Luck By Chance, as the heiress-débutante with everything to play for in the treacherous film industry. To play a meta-joke on the universe, after this stint in a modern classic, Isha left the movies and went back home to Kerala. “I decided I wanted to go back for a year and a half, because that is where I find my strength, and that is where my artistic juices really come alive.” Mumbai, it seemed, was ringing with praise, further offers, and friendly warnings against career suicide if she left just then. “And I said, no, not really.” Her sentences gear up to go into battle. “People thought I was nuts, but I have no complaints.” Beat. “My parents have lived an unconventional life and I live an unconventional life.” Beat. “‘This is the way it should be,’ is not the way I want to do it. If I don’t want to do it, then I don’t want to have to.” Ba-dum tish.

The single biggest thing that matters is the dance. It consumes her life, both outwardly and within. “I have one suitcase,” she says of the performing life, “that I haven’t unpacked in eight years. It’s covered in ‘Fragile’ stickers, like a tabla case of Zakirbhai’s or Taufiqbhai’s, and I won’t let anyone touch it. When they made me this offer, they said that I wouldn’t be able to do films for a year – which was fine with me – and that I would have to live in Delhi the whole time. And so finally, I’ve unpacked.”

The artiste, on the other hand, carries no baggage, but is always awake, listening and learning. The lessons, inevitably, are written on the body. “There are places on my feet where you can stick pins in and I won’t feel it.” Her role in the production involves being a playful princess, shinning up ropes and hanging, Juliet-like, on the cheek of night. The work has gained her bruises aplenty. “I’ve had to climb ropes on a fractured foot before. And while I was doing it I thought, okay, I’m registering pain, but I’m not feeling it. It’s an addictive state, a state of abandon.”

And that’s what it comes down to: eight hours a day, “at least two hours when I’m on schedule,” seven days a week, every day for the last 12 years. Bollywood, with its initial culture shock and continuing series of surprises, will have to wait. “I love film,” Isha says, the way she also says she loves shopping, travelling and reading. But everything, beautiful and valuable as it is, must subordinate itself to art, and art must be at the centre of everything: life today, life in future. “Everything I have learned mustn’t die with me. Indian arts are dying. It’s a fact. A lot of my teachers will not be teaching by the time, for example, I have kids. I have to ensure that I pass on my knowledge. I take decisions with that in mind.”

She likes getting sidetracked, too – as long as it relates to the work. “I get involved in my looks,” she says. “I get involved in everything.” “She is such a darling to work with,” says Verve’s guest stylist and the show’s costume designer, Neeta Lulla (who also worked with her in Kisna). “She’s very reciprocative – and very, very disciplined.” “But I don’t like to interfere in anything,” Isha clarifies. “When you have a National Award-winning costume designer styling, you’d best keep your mouth shut. It would be like someone telling me how to dance. If it’s Shiamak (Davar, dancer and the production’s principal choreographer), I’ll listen.” Or else? Her eyebrows fly up, signifying what she means. Just go watch.

As we go out to shoot, the heat is dying down, the fierce daylight softening a little. When she walks past and climbs on to a wooden platform, time seems to stop for everyone working on gilding this fairground. Our eyes are on her: she raises her chin as she looks at the camera, smiles a little, and waits for the flashbulbs to start popping. In a minute, she is flying through the air in perfect curves, playing to the camera. The ballerina, the athlete and the actor come together. We watch.

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