BOLLYWOOD DOES THE BEEB
By Jean Duell (Rhonda Ward)
The drums have ceased, the fireworks fallen and the stars have retreated inside. Headlines such as “War on the dance floor” have lost their pungency in Mumbai. The Indian version of the BBC’s formatted programme, Dancing With the Stars, had added spice to the old girl’s format with dazzling costumes, shake-your-hips Indian music, startling dance interpretations and the beauty unparalleled of Bollywood’s stars.
Ian Hogg, head of Theatre Red production house in Singapore, was convinced the format would do well in India. Sony India took little convincing to take the progamme on. Synergy, an Indian based production company, was engaged and with some consultation with the BBC, the format headed to India and an estimated final audience of over 72 million viewers.
Bollywood is the night sky for glamorous stars and Sony plucked some of the finest including the velvet bomb, Shilpa Shetty to be part of the programme.
Shilpa Shetty
There was a belief amongst the Indian media that Shilpa had been chosen because another star had turned the gig down. Shilpa’s glamorous mask never cracked even under an aggressive barrage of questions from the media at the Sony media launch in Mumbai’s stunning the recently bombed ‘Taj Mahal’ hotel. The ‘steel magnolia’ was the epitome of gracious diplomacy and didn’t put a foot wrong throughout the entire series of Dancing With the Stars in India. The programme, renamed Jhalak Dikhalla Jaa, (JDJ) which loosely translates to ‘show me what you’ve got’ (glamour wise!) in Hindi, was, like the name, about to be changed whether the BBC liked it or not.
In India, the unfailing pulse of festival was beating hard as Ganesh Ganpati, Mumbai’s most beloved festival to the elephant god, threw its colour, vitality and riot of song and dance beyond the streets and beaches, into the JDJ studio in the old spinning mill area of Mumbai’s suburbs. The Bombay Times and other papers sported photographs of dancers, judges and choreographers paying homage to Ganesh and praying for a little luck on the dance floor. To the Australians and Brits associated with the production, the sequined cyclone introduced them to the ways of television production in India.
Australian, Neil Wilson, ex-ABC and long time Asian based producer and television advisor, was handed the baton to do JDJ by Derek Pola, production head of the Singapore based Australian Production house Theatre Red. “When Derek called me, I had the bag packed in minutes. It’s a great format and what better place to do this show than dance-mad India.” Duncan Cooper from the BBC and holder of the secrets of “Dancing with the Stars’ was on the ground in Mumbai for a few weeks to familiarize Neil with the format. “The workings of the Beeb and Aunty (ABC) are similar and we had a similar history including the fondness for a beer and a curry. I’ve worked extensively in Television in Singapore and Indonesia and India set up another challenge for me. The production meetings were, in comparison to what I have been involved in, quite crazy. While production meetings in Singapore are very orderly and Indonesia meetings are extremely polite, Indian production meetings are madcap affairs where, if you want to get a point across, you need to out-volume all others while continually employing a punishing amount of physicality. As the meetings go on, it becomes quite tiring but oh the passion of it all!”
The formula for the programme is supposedly consistent around the world, but Neil learned early in the piece that India would put its stamp on the format and the programme would be the richer for it. If you take a top Bollywood producer, a millionaire television chef, two soapie actresses, an ex- Indian cricket captain, a playboy/actor, Bollywood diva and talk-show host and put them before a judging panel of Bollywood producer, choreographer/producer and insanely svelte actress, the formula has gotta give. “The first inkling I got that the formula was bound to take a hiding was on day one of rehearsals when the modern waltz became something of a Bollywood routine. Some of the initial steps were included in the first 4 or 5 bars of music but soon after hands started to wave about and the concept of the modern waltz became lost in Bollywood. I tried to get them back on track as the Beeb were pushing strongly for a semi-regimented approach to the dance classifications. We had bought in Sandip Soparrkar, the black flash with the hydraulic hips to teach the choreographers how to dance the categories as the world would recognize them.” In hip-hugging black pants Sandip was mesmeric as he guided the choreographers through the various dance categories. “We had agreed that included in the ‘freestyle category’ Bollywood could be represented, but with little ado, they moved the goalposts and everything was being “Bollywoodized”; Tango, Samba, Waltz, Cha-Cha and even Jive. Realizing that nothing was going to go according to formula, we did the adjusting. I am glad that we did, the result was spectacular.”
The complete outfitting of the studio took only three weeks. The pace of work in hot, polluted humid conditions in India is extraordinary. The set was a masterpiece of modern Indian design and nothing could not be done. Each of the contestants had a fully equipped personal dressing room by way of a fleet of air-conditioned buses that would pull in for the show and disappear until the following week. It was not unusual for celebrities to linger in their buses up to an hour or two after filming was scheduled to start. The higher the status the longer the linger. The juxtaposition of the immaculately presented super stars emerging from luxury buses and the stunning colourfully clad female construction workers hauling cement upon heads on a construction site next to the buses puts the ‘incredible’ in India. As the stars were spirited away across the car park after the show, the workers lay down over the car park to sleep for the night. Nobody seems to be flummoxed by either filming delays or al fresco sleeping behavior, in fact many of the crew took to sleeping at the studio during the production. Neil could not go there. “The production crew all had beds at the office AND the studio! Some didn’t see home for a week on end. 80 hours was the norm with some stints running into 36 continuous hours. The hotel, kindly arranged for me, was in North Mumbai and the Studio was in South Mumbai. In a world as we know it that wouldn’t be too bad but in Mumbai it meant 3 hours travel ONE WAY! It all seemed a bit surreal when, half crazy through lack of sleep after the rehearsals, my patience was severely tested the following record day when a star delayed the record by 2 hours by refusing to come out of her caravan because she didn’t like the brand of mineral water on offer. A star in India is sacrosanct.”
The three judges on the panel had super star rating and commanded a slavish audience.
Bottom Row Judges Shilpa Shetty, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Farah Khan
Top Row Hosts husband and wife Parmeet Sethi and Archana Puran
Sanjay Leela Bhansali, screenwriter, producer and director of the Hollywood acclaimed movie Black would glide in, attired immaculately in his trademark long black over-shirt (sherwaini) and white trousers. His black eyes and hair and quietly spoken comments added to his melancholy air of apparent disinterest. His friend and fellow judge, the formidable choreographer/director, Farah Khan, took no prisoners. The choreographer to Monsoon Wedding, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams and Shakira’s MTV performance Hips Don’t Lie, is a typical Bollywood story herself. Born to a Bollywood director, Farah became inspired through watching her brother choreograph for the industry and through watching television. An on-air spat with a former boyfriend, the playboy/actor and JDJ contestant Aakashdeep Sehgal, invoked a typically formidable response from Farah and good newspaper copy for the show. The third in the axis of glamour was the velvet bomb, Shilpa Shetty, described in Mumbai’s papers as “the oomph girl with the right clothes and the hour-glass figure” and in the English papers as the winner of England’s Celebrity Big Brother, 2007. Encouraged by the Mumbai papers to improve her vocabulary and hold back on the over use of the word ‘superb’, Shilpa the pussycat dressed up as a sex kitten, has another less promoted side to her. Holding a black belt in karate and speaking several languages, she is also an ambassador for Romanov vodka. Okay the combination sounds deadly but what may be more deadly is her commitment to PETA, the animal world’s equivalent to ‘Greenpeace’. Making international headlines as the maligned inmate on Britain’s “Big Brother”, the PETA girl should never have been called upon to cook a chicken. Can she dance! She could melt icebergs with a shimmy of her hips whilst she slays her foes with a flick of the wrist.
The JDJ contestants were dealt with by the axis of glamour more for their entertainment ability than their adherence to dancing styles.
Rati Agnihotri and her choreographer Feroz Khan
Rati Agnihotri, Bollywood diva and sweetheart to the assembled audience, was the first contestant to feel the push of the judging panel.
The media had alluded to the difference in ages between Rati and her younger choreographer. This is Bollywood where Botox is taken with the morning idli. Second to take the long walk home was the leggy talk-show host and daughter of an ‘007 Octopussy’ villain, Puja Bedi
Pooja Bedi + Consultant Director/Producer Neil Wilson
Wide of smile, well presented and a passable dancer, Puja injected a sense of schoolgirl follies to the show.
The only non-Bollywood affiliate, the TV chef, Sanjeev Kapoor went down like a soufflé on the third week.
Nicole Alvares and TV Chef Sanjeev Kapoor
His 19 year old choreographer, Nicole Alvares, in the middle of exams and 10 hours a week of rehearsing Sanjeev, had, according to him, agreed to him putting in a sub standard show so that he would be eliminated. “Mobilizing viewer support was an easy task but to know that I would have gone ahead while the remaining pairs who are definitely better dancers, would suffer because of my popularity with viewers was not acceptable to me” said Sanjeev. (‘Hit Style’ Mumbai, Oct 4, 2006).
Zinging like ninepins, the next to fall after dancing a patriotic version of the samba was the boy with the body and brashness to boot, Akashdeep Saighal.
Akashdeep Saighal.
It may have been tied up with him unfurling the Indian flag from behind his shoulders, approaching the judges and doing a respectful tikka (marking) upon their shocked and made-up faces that bought him a ticket out. Ex-girlfriend, Farah Khan, went dark and gave Akash a bollicking and skint marks. All of the judges objected to him doing a bhangra instead of a samba.
Being hit for six was Ajay Jadeja, ex India cricket captain.
Ajay Jadeja
Bottle his smile and hold onto his booty, Ajay was loved by all. The discipline of the game had stayed with Ajay enough to take his choreographer, Rhea, along on a family holiday to the Indian holiday beach town, Goa. A hit of cricket on the beach with the kids, a meal with the family then down to the samba with Rhea.
The Bollywood director and actor, Mahesh Manjekar, always referred to as the guy who made it out of the slum, was wildly applauded by audience and judges alike for the tough guy theatrical renditions he brought to each dance.
Salsa, samba, tango, waltz; all unrecognizable in the theatrical skill the director and his choreographer, the feline shimmy shaker Sonia Jaffer, brought to each dance. What an audience puller! The judges and audience loved the whole affair but not enough to prevent the rakish Mahesh from walking the plank.
Mahesh Manjekar
The final week saw the last two contestants, the two stupendously good looking television actresses, Mona Singh and Sveta Salve squared off with great dignity.
Mumbai started to take sides, they were either Sveta devotees or Mona lovers. The Grand Finale was a class act unto itself. As families hung Diwali ((equivalent of Christmas in India,) decorations in houses and along streets, the conversation was Sveta or Mona.
The husband and wife compere team, Parmeet Sethi and Archana Puran Singh, brought a homely but sophisticated ease to the progamme.
Steadi-cam operators Yardley and Deep
Not the only husband and wife team on the production, the steadicam operator and assistant, Deep and Yardley have been working together during hundreds of films, productions and television shows over many years. Deep, now in his fifties, boasts to being perhaps the oldest steadicam operator he knows. Both very fit, well traveled and linguistically skilled, they managed to pull off 360-degree shots with relative ease. Both couples were working for the first time with the husband and wife team that managed Synergy, the Indian production house that produced the show. Rosa and the mellifluously voiced Siddhartha Basu, have also been in the business for years.
Siddhartha Basu and wife Rosa
The Svelte Band leader, Merlin, was accompanied in the band by her son. Family in India means a lot. The world of entertainment is the domain of the Kapoors, the Khans and Bachans. Family and business are melded together in India appearing to some Westerners as super-clans or nests of nepotism. With stories circulating about the Indian mafia’s heavy hand in the industry, everything seems family oriented. Gregory Robert’s book, ‘Shantaram,’ has exposed a heavy criminal interest right at the top of the entertainment tree. But, ‘Shantaram’ is fiction right?
Neil had to come to terms with another category on the payroll in India, the Spot Boy. “It appears that everyone in show business in India has at least one Spot Boy. These are personal assistants who will hand you a tissue if they think you have a sniff or perform any of a hundred tasks. We named one of them ‘The Human Coat-hanger’: His task was to stand beside our host with a coat hanger on his extended arm. He would stand there at all times when we had a break from record and the host would hang his coat up or put it on as we began recording. This appeared to be the boy’s only function and the expression on his face never changed. The more famous the star the more spot boys to attend to them. It was rumoured that the biggest star in India (if not the world) Amitabh Bachan had so many spot boys that he needed a large bus to transport them everywhere he went”.
The Grande Finale was perceived as an audience driven choice and a turn up for the judges as Mona out popularized the technically better dancer, Sveta, to take home the trophy, the money and a new car. “It was a fantastic night but not without it’s moments.” said Neil. “As Indian regulations only allow news and sport to go to air live, we had to beam the programme up to Singapore, turn it around within 30 minutes and broadcast within a few minutes of completion. We were still tallying the final votes as the programme was nearing completion on air. “
As the lights of Diwali lit up every home and street across Mumbai and the boom of fireworks wrenched the night, Mona was claimed the Dancing Queen.
Neil with Runner up Sveta Salve
Dancing with the Stars (Jhalak Dikhalla Jaa) winner Mona Singh with Theatre Red Consultant Neil Wilson
What ensued was a tizzy of celebrations with Sveta hosting her party and Mona hers. Will Mumbai ever be the same?
Friend Gania Kosar, Derek Pola and Blogger Jean Duell
Blogger Jean Duell assisting (?) Security at studio
