Choreographer-dancer Rajit Dev and Nora Fatehi have created magic yet again on-screen in a new T-Series music video titled “Chhor Denge”. The former said that the actress has broken her image of a western dancer with this one as she is doing (proper) Bollywood dance steps in it.
He revealed that they took around 40 days to rehearse for this song and Rajit worked on her style as well as her expressions.
“This song is very different from what Nora has been doing in the past in Bollywood. She has performed mostly western, and even if it was a Bollywood song her dance was not typical Bollywood. This is the first time that we got an opportunity to portray Nora in a completely different style. She has performed the way you would see a certain Bollywood dance choreographed by Saroj Khan or Vaibhavi Merchant,” he said.
“It’s an emotional song, but it’s very energetic and has a story to tell. You have a whole narration going on and also Nora’s performance happening simultaneously. I aimed to not just choreograph her dance, but also focus on her expressions and we rehearsed for 40 days. I had to first get her into that Bollywood zone because she has a certain body language which I had to break so that she fits in this character. Expressions played the most important part because smiling while performing is very easy, but in this song it was different. There’s a lot of anger pain and lot mixed emotions here and that’s where the right expressions with Bollywood moves worked and she nailed it,” he added.
To prepare for this character, Rajit ensured Nora watched a lot of dance performances by Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, especially those that were choreographed by Saroj Khan.Not just that he even asked her to wear Indian clothes so that she gets into the skin of the character and get the body language right.
“The first day she came to the rehearsals wearing sweat pants, and I told her that you need to wear Indian clothes so that it helps you get into the character and understand the dance movements better , then for a whole month she wore ethnic outfits. This was a tough thing to break, but she was able to do it so gracefully,” he said.
Rajit shared that he looked at this song as an opportunity to prove his skills as a choreographer, and said, “I have always looked up to Saroj ji and Vaibhavi Merchant when it comes to Indian Bollywood songs and since I have been in the industry for a long time this song was my chance to prove myself because generally, people ask for a female choreographer to teach those feminine steps.”
“This is different from what Nora and I have done in the past, and the training that I got under Vaibhavi Merchant helped me showcase my talent of picturising a beautiful Bollywood song,” he added.
Praising Nora, Rajit revealed that her performance gave him goosebumps. He said, “At the end of the song she is dancing in a ring of fire and her emotions had to be very high, and she got it just right and I literally had goosebumps seeing her perform.”
“She has killed it in the song. This was a challenge for both of us because there are people who say that she is good at item numbers, but I know that as a performer she could do anything, and though it was a challenge, she proved herself in this one,” he concluded.
