Kate Middleton mobbed in the street as she makes surprise solo appearance

The Princess of Wales has made an unannounced visit today to celebrate Britain’s Indian community, where she was mobbed by wellwishers. Kate, dressed in an all white ensemble, saw the best of Bollywood in Britain as she saw Indian dancing, tasted chai and visited family businesses on Leicester’s ‘Golden Mile’.

On an away day to the Midlands, she met people who have this week been marking Holi, the Indian festival of colours, love and spring, as she celebrated the city’s diversity, creativity and heritage. Her first stop was a visit The Aakash Odedra Company, an organisation which helps more than 1,000 people a week through its range of community dance programmes.

The company, founded in Leicester in 2011 by Aakash Odedra, an award-winning choreography and dancer, with a mission to create “a happier and healthier society through dance and the arts”.

The dance company recently joined forces with the charity Move Against Cancer, offering Bollywood dance classes to those recovering from the disease. The Princess of Wales last year announced that she was in remission from cancer following a diagnosis in early 2024. Following a course of chemotherapy, the princess, 44, has made a gradual return to royal duties.

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On her solo visit to Leicester, Kate also visited a community centre where she was shown some Bollywood dancing and given a separate solo performance by Birmingham-born Odedra, who is trained in Bharatanatyam and Kathak dance styles and lived in India where he became a student of Shiamak Davar, a renowned Bollywood choreographer.

Odedra, who continues to perform across the world, showed the princess a rehearsal of his latest work, ‘Songs of the Bulbul’, an interpretation of an ancient Sufi story about a captured songbird, or bulbul, which sings an exquisite tune before perishing from despair.

The show, created with choreographer Rani Khanam and composer Ranjan, the associate artist of the Royal Albert Hall, Aakash combines Ranjan’s new score, played by a live orchestra from Manchester Camerata, and the voice of Abi Sampa and combines music, dance and the poetry traditions of Sufism.

Afterwards, Kate took a five minute walk down to local Sari shop Ladlees on the Golden Mile on the city’s Belgrave Road, one of the streets in the UK with the highest concentration of shops and restaurants offering Indian jewellery, fashion and sweets. She then crossed the road to try some chai in Bobby’s restaurant, a family-run business named after a 1973 Bollywood film.

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