Press Release Summary: Viewers tuning in to the Fox Network show, "So You Think You Can Dance," got a brief glimpse of the Bollywood style of dancing performed by contestants Katee Shean and Joshua Allen on the July 9 episode.
Press Release Body: By MICHEL W. POTTS Special to India-West
Viewers tuning in to the Fox Network show, "So You Think You Can Dance," got a brief glimpse of the Bollywood style of dancing performed by contestants Katee Shean and Joshua Allen on the July 9 episode.
Because the two dancers were choreographed by Nakul Dev Mahajan of the Los Angeles-based NDM Dance Productions, the couple gave such an entertaining performance to the music of the song "Dhoom tana" from the Shah Rukh Khan hit film "Om Shanti Om" that they were held over to compete another week.
"Who would have ever dreamed that we'd see Indian cultural dancing on this program?" judge Nigel Lythgoe said animatedly at the close of their exciting performance.
"It's so good, Nakul, thank you for bringing this to us. It's fabulous."
Given the show's growing popularity over the last three years, the producers were keen to feature a Bollywood number in this year's competition after a similar dance show in Australia had earlier introduced a Bollywood segment in one of its episodes.
Eager to find a knowledgeable local Bollywood choreographer who could teach Shean and Allen, the producers contacted Mahajan when they discovered that he came highly recommended by others who had worked with him on a number of Hollywood television shows including "The Office."
"I was already a big fan of the show to begin with, so I was quite familiar with the show, its template and the format of how it's done," Mahajan told India-West. "When they told me what they wanted, I knew exactly what to give them."
While Mahajan gave the producers several songs to chose from, they ultimately chose "Dhoom tana" because "the song was dynamic in the way it was composed and the arrangement of the song was one that really spoke of Bollywood," Mahajan recounted. "They liked how the song built musically, and that really caught their ear."
The show's guidelines stipulate that the contestants have only five hours with the choreographer to learn and rehearse the piece. Their segment was only 90 seconds long, and Mahajan had only three days of 90 minutes each to teach Shean and Allen their routine.
Mahajan didn't know which contestants he would be teaching until the day before the first rehearsal. "So when I found out who it was, I went online to see what their background was and realized that Katee's background was in contemporary dance and Joshua's was hip-hop," he said.
"I was really pleased to learn that, because Bollywood dancing is a plethora of different styles of dance put together, and if you're a contemporary dancer, you already have a variety in your repertoire of what you're able to do. Bollywood dancing is heavily influenced by hip-hop movement, so having Joshua with a hip-hop background made it easy for me to incorporate that. So we had to adapt to what they already know and what we can teach them in the short amount of time that we were allowed."
The two contestants had little difficulty in learning the Bollywood style. "It was truly a gift to work with them, and I found it very pleasant to work with professional dancers," Mahajan said. "They were just hungry for movement, they were hungry to stay in the show, and they were passionate."
The SAJAforum Web site reported that the performance apparently prompted scores of people to do a Google search of the phrase "so you think you can dance Bollywood," making it the 77th most popular search item. The dance can be viewed on YouTube as well.
The routine also received rave reviews from the show's three judges. "When Joshua and Katee picked Bollywood out of a hat, they didn\'t even know what it was. Who would have thought that just days later, the ever-masculine Joshua would find his niche in a jewel encrusted stocking cap, jingling anklets, a sequin vest and beaded cuff bracelets?" noted the Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker blog. "But from the moment he stepped out in that light-refracting ensemble, Joshua was Bollywood. He committed to a dance that was totally out of his comfort zone, and as far as I\'m concerned, he won the night for it!"
Fox News television critic Diane Macedo noted that "despite the favoritism, it was still Joshua Allen and Katee Shean who walked away with the best performance of the night, with the show's first Bollywood routine. Whatever criticism the judges had for Joshua's waltz was completely erased by how perfectly he and Katee nailed the second dance. This SYTYCD first is likely one for the record books, which will soon be half full of just Joshua and Katee routines."
During the show, prior to Shean and Allen's turn in front of the cameras, a short video clip was aired showing the two dancers hard at work as they were learning their routine from Mahajan, which in turn enhanced his reputation as a choreographer.
But Mahajan's work did not end there. After the segment aired, the producers brought him back to choreograph the opening segment of the July 17 episode. Once again, the theme was Bollywood, this time with all the remaining contestants dancing to the music of "Jhoom barabar jhoom" from the film of the same name starring Preity Zinta and Bobby Deol.
This time around, Mahajan made some changes in choreographing the new segment. "There's so many different styles of Bollywood dancing, and our company definitely takes pride in having our own style, so what I tried to do with my team was give a different flavor or a different idea of what Bollywood dancing is," Mahajan told India-West. "So it was not replicating what America already saw."
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