Dancing on Film

In the early years, films starred actors who sang their own songs. These actors had limited mobility, since the sound was recorded at the same time as the image. Dance posed two problems: The strain of dancing and singing would reflect in the actor’s voice and breath, and the movement away from the mics would lead to shifts in recorded sound and volume.

Nitin Bose’s film Dhoop Chhaon (1935, Bengali) is credited with establishing playback singing in a systematic manner. Playback singing gave more mobility to the actors and made room for the staging of spectacular dances.

In 1948 two films released — Uday Shankar’s Kalpana and SS Vasan’s Chandralekha, that had a big influence on film dances to come.

The separation of Indian performing traditions into categories of classical and folk conforming to a western understanding of these terms, was a post colonial effort, borne out of a need to build the idea of a common Indian heritage. This classification is reflected in the forms in Hindi cinema, and other Indian cinema, as well.

Hindi film dance draws from Indian and non Indian performance traditions like Nautanki, Ras Lila, Kathak among others. Hollywood musicals also had a significant influence on Hindi film song and dance sequences. The forms are by no means watertight and there are many overlaps and collisions.

Films have tried to retain some degree of authenticity of the mujra, especially in courtesan films, with Kathak practitioners often hired to train actresses.

Courtesan films were the most pervasive Hindi dance films, and the few that offered lead opportunity to female actors.

Film folk dances are depicted as more energetic and vibrant. They typically feature men and women in rural costumes, often dhotis (a lower body garment) for men and ghagra choli for women (voluminous skirt and blouse).

The movement vocabulary includes jumping, clapping, twirling, among others.

These dances show men and women dancing together, in opposition to the classical, that largely depicts only women. The presence of background dancers also invokes a sense of community. Most festive dances can be categorised as folk. Holi dances, for instance, show an atmosphere that is more sexually permissive.

The representations of East Asian (largely Chinese) cultures drew from a western orientalist perspective, with a largely uniform depiction of anywhere east of India — The use of pentatonic scales to evoke an ‘east asian’ sound, and props such as hand fans.

The other essentialised culture block in Hindi films is of West/Central Asia.

Western song and dance routines often employed a medley of dance forms, the waltz, the twist, cha-cha-cha, and swing. These forms were prevalent from the 1930s to the 1960s. Disco became popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

Cabaret in Hindi films largely implies a sexually suggestive dance performed by a woman for an audience, often in nightclubs or similar places of dubious repute . The cabaret dancer was often the vamp, a popular figure in Hindi films from the 1950s to 1980s who as the sensual, publicly dancing figure was the opposite of the chaste heroine. The binaries between the two female figures were marked through costume, names, dancing styles, among others.

"In a love song the couple would usually hold hands, or run through fields. So no dance steps were required”, describes actress Waheeda Rehman in film scholar Nasreen Munni Kabir's book Conversations with Waheeda Rehman. These songs require a tripping about, without extensively calling upon the performers dancing skills.

The movement vocabulary of these sequences included a synchronised walking, twirling, running, stroking, jumping, among others. The presence of non dancing male actors possibly was a significant aspect informing the choreography.