In Indian movies dance is vital as the story. This is so because in India whether you are old or young, good or bad everybody can dance. It’s a nice way to relax and so people want to both watch and dance to catchy tunes. Due to this movies which don’t even have a need for a dance song introduce one in one way or the other. In the past every movie had a female negative lead or the vamp that would wear skimpy colorful clothes and dance for the villains. This brings to mind vamps like Helen, Bindu and Aruna Irani. These dancing divas had a style of their own. Helen was famous for songs like Monica Oh My Darling and Yeh mera dil. Then dancing became a group affair and everybody was expected to dance.

There was an era when dancing was only done by the women. Soon the men were expected to shake a leg too. This was a waterloo for many action heroes. Stars like Dharmendra and his son Sunny Deol are terrible dancers and is very obvious when they dance. Then came in stars like Amitabh, Jeetendra and Rajesh Khanna who could dance something if not very well. It was Mithun Chakraborty who took the stage at that time. He did movies based on dance like Disco Dancer and brought in the disco craze into the country. Dancing then moved to another high when stars like Amir, Salman and Shah Rukh came in. The new generation of actors were all natural dancers. But let’s not forget to give credit to some actors who were not very good dancers but worked very hard to make it big in the dance industry. Topping this chart will be Saif Ali Khan and apna Big B. Saif was called the star with two left feet but after Oole Oole he changed his image completely. Just look at Amitabh Bachchan in Chali Chali or Rock and roll soniye and he will teach you how dance your way gracefully, stylishly and youthfully to success.

When we say dance there are some actresses who are called the goddess of dancing. To name a few lets start with Rekha, Sri devi, Madhuri, Urmila, Karishma and Aishwarya. If you are an actress who can’t dance in bollywood you can survive. So, all the actresses can dance a bit at least. The ones who excel are the ones who can dance gracefully with complete facial expressions and the smile on their faces. Rekha won a national award for Umrao Jaan where she plays a courtesan. This involves very intricate dancing with a different expression for every word. Each of the above mentioned actresses has played roles in major dance movies like Dil to Pagal Hai, Hum apke hain kaun and Devdas. People still can’t get over the magic of Sri Devi’s Na jaane kahaan se aaye hai, Rekha’s Dil cheez kya hai, Madhuri’s Didi tera devar deewaana, Urmila’s rangeela re, Karishma’s Mujhko hue na khabar and Aishwarya’s Crazy kiya re.

Choreography is now the most in thing. The top dance directors now are Saroj Khan, Farah Khan, Vaibhavi Merchant, Bosco and Caesar, Ahmed Khan, Ganesh Hegde and Ganesh Acharya. Each one of these directors has a style of their own. Saroj Khan is the senior most and has many awards and hit songs to her credit. Farah is a very different director and has many unusual songs to her credit like Chaiya Chaiya, which was shot on top of a moving train. She is also the one who brought in the Hritik Roshan style of dancing. She is the one who brought out the best of his dancing abilities in his first movie Kaho Na Pyar hai. Farah and Ahmed slowly graduated from only choreography to directing their own movies too. Farah’s first movie was Main Hoon Na with the king Khan and it was a very big hit.

Ahmed made his debut with Lakeer with Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty and John Abraham but he wasn’t that lucky and the movie bombed badly. Ganesh Hegde released his own pop album which did okay business. Another choreographer who is exceptional is Shaimak Davar. He runs a lot of dance classes in different cities and if he is in your city better join up. Latest heart throb Shaahid Kapoor was his student and watching him dance is a real pleasure now.

Ganesh Acharya is a director who is so fat but he is talented beyond words. He has choreographed songs for Lagaan and his biggest hit was Koi Aaye Toh Le jaaye with Mamta Kulkarni. Vaibhavi Merchant is the director who is making Hritik Dance to her moves these days. She is a young lady who has proved to the world that anything can be achieved by hard work.

The funda of forced dance sequences in movies is at its peak. If there isn’t place for a dance song in the movie then a special song is shot either to introduce the characters as it was done in Dus or a promotional song is shot like its been done for Kaal. This has also given birth to the concept of the item girl. These girls are only good at dancing and are only used to increase the viewer ship of the movie. The top item girls right now are Rakhi Sawant, Yana Gupta and Isha Kopikar.

Whether it’s a tragic song or a suspence there has to be some form of dance. Bollywood dance is made up all forms of dancing. There are songs like Maar Dala which is in the classic form of dancing and there are songs like Babuji which has no particular style at all.