Dance is a quintessential element of the Hindi film. It expresses joy and is a way to bond and to celebrate; it also takes forward the story. Some Bollywood dances have become iconic. Bollywood choreographers tell us a bit about their most difficult dances this International Dance Day.
Dozens of talented dancers, some really athletic moves and a lead actor like Hrithik Roshan. The song is a floor filler and the video demonstrates why. For choreographer and Shiamak Davar’s assistant Marzi Pentonjee, this dance sequence was one of the most challenging.
Songs featuring Bhai are hits not because Salman Khan can dance but in spite of the fact that he cannot! It is easy to imagine that it would be difficult for any choreographer to get him to shake a leg in a way that isn’t awkward. For choreographer Ahmed Khan, it was a challenge to get Bhai to do more than just put his hands in his pocket and jiggle his biceps… he made him actually dance!
Saroj Khan is perhaps the most well-known of veteran Bollywood choreographers, who has done countless iconic Bollywood numbers. For her, this fast-paced song featuring two of Bollywood’s most graceful dancers was the most challenging; because Khan felt that the song was not really suited to dance and felt she had to be really inventive in coming up with the right steps.
This is a song performed by a singer on stage and not really a choreographed dance performance. The challenge here according to choreographer Ashley Lobo, was crowd control. There were about five thousand people at the venue who had to be kept occupied through the night; which was the challenge here.
For Vijay Ganguly the challenge was to “showcase the tomfoolery between the boys in a hostel” and creating quirky steps for several groups of dancers who would be dancing together but doing different steps in separate areas of the frame.
Shiamak Davar is the man known to bring a truly international feel to Bollywood dance. For him, this was challenging because it was the first time he choreographed for a Hindi film. It was also challenging because it was all pure dance but had to convey the story of envy and yearning and stubbornness.
For Caesar Gonsalves, the challenge was to make three people of very different dance calibres dance together. Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar and Abhay Deol had to dance according to their abilities as well as according to the characters they were playing. The steps had to reflect humour, playfulness and camaraderie which is what the sequence is all about.
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