Bollywood Film dancing has its roots and  is primarily modelled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans  or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blends with Western dance styles, though it is usual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film.. Bollywood Tourism had one such exclusive workshop on its tour on the 17^th January 2012 for their German guests, Dr. Hiltrud and their group accompanied by our tour guide Unnati Manikeri. This was their 3^rd Visit to India, and this time they wanted to take a peek into the movie making of Bollywood.

The Dance worshop, was obviously a highlight of the entire tour experience, as this was an interactive and very informative session.

‘The guests enjoyed the session very much and  they were keen  to listen & watch and also participated with great enthusiasm ‘says our tour guide Unnati.

Infact they thoroughly enjoyed the second segment of demonstrations & clippings which had the famous song and dance sequence of Madhuri Dixit ( Kahe ched mohe , Maar dala, and Dola re) from Sanjay Leela Bhansalis popular movie “Devdas”, Yash Chopras“ Dil to pagal Hai” ( the classical and western fusion of Madhuri) and Aamir Khans Oscar nominated “ Lagaan”. ( Radha kaise na Jale)

This is what they had to say about tuesdays session…. all the 4 guests shared their opinions & one of the ladies wrote it down….

“It was a great experience.
We see Indian films now with different eyes.
Dancing is  a great art. It needs hard training.
The admiration for the actors is increasing because they are singers , dancers & actors.
We now can understand a little bit more that there are so much emotions in the dance.
The teacher was incredibly charming !!! Thank you.”

Dr. Hiltrud vou der Gaturn

17/1/2012

Apart from having Money and Glamour, Bollywood has a Heart too. Bollywood Tourism had organizes a tour for a Family of 5 pax. The lady Ms. Mariapia Sanchez, is from Boston and has adopted a child who is paralyzed on a wheel child (from Afghanisthan). He was granted a wish from the ‘Make a Wish Foundation”. Being a bollywood fan , he had asked to see a Bollywood Star. Fortunately, Ms Maria contacted BT and we organized a Full day tour for them.

On being taken to Big Nitin Desai Studios, the guests got to witness a lot of action. This was the 17th Dec, Saturday and coincidently happened to be one of the days of Elimination of the well renowned Reality shows Big Boss, which is being shot at ND studios. Our Bollywood Tour Guide Nandita requested Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt for photographs with the child. Not only did both Click pictures but also gave Autographs.

Moreover they even asked them if they wanted to see the Live Shooting. Our guests got the ringside seats and enjoyed the best possible view. The boy had his wish fulfilled, all thanks to Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt and Bollywood Tourism. One comes to know, that not only does Bollywood have Glamour but a Heart too.

For those who are interested in having an enriching Bollywood experience , you can log on to www.bollywoodtourism.com.

Have any of you visited ‘Kweensland’? By Kweensland, I mean our dearest Ekta Kapoor whose K-serials have managed to enrapture almost every Indian. With the advent of Balaji Telefilms, the face of Indian soap’s has undergone a sea-change. Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi – India’s longest running tele-serial which got every Indian woman glued to the TV set during the prime time and then their series of K-serials… Believe it or not but it actually altered the lives of most families. Every routine and schedule was adjusted to incorporate 9pm to 10pm as TV time. Can you imagine watching 5 generations together in a span of 15 min (assuming the rest 15 min are ad’s)???? This reminds me of the bollywood number (Govinda’s song) – IT HAPPENS ONLY IN INDIA!!

When I met Shobha Kapoor during an interview, I asked her what’s with the ‘K’ obsession? I was expecting some answer related to astrology, but to my surprise, it turned out to be that they ran into a few consequent hits, each title beginning with the letter K, so they just decided to continue the K-saga. So there was Kasauti Zindagi Ki, Kasam Se, Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, Kutumb, Kayamat etc.

For those of you who still haven’t guessed my next stop, well it was Balaji Films – India’s largest tele producer and one of the few tele-production houses who that have forayed into films. Their latest movie, Love Sex Aur Dhokha (LSD) has received excellent ratings from the critics. This movie also proved Ekta’s mettle as a film producer and not just a tele producer. It seems that Jeetendra Kapoor refused to attend the screening Ekta organized for the film fraternity on the note that he was too busy, but later caught the movie on the sly with some of his friends. He loved it. < Link…> And for those who plan to watch the movie only because of the name…sorry guys, there’s actually very little of it in the movie…. Such is life dearies!!

Balaji owns almost 32 studios in Mumbai and each of these sets get re-used and re-modified according to the storyline of the serial. These days, even other serial producers and film producers have been eyeing Balaji’s sets. What got me really intrigued was the grandiosity of each set. Each haveli captured the essence of the family, be it gujrathi, rajasthani, muslim, bengali or our very own chawls of mumbai’s. The colour, décor, furniture, the wall hanging’s – every minute detail! Ekta is indeed a perfectionist. Infact their most realistic set, is that of the current hot favorite Pavitra Rishta. Actually we were quite lucky, when we went to their Mahabharat set in Filmcity, they were shooting for Pavitra Rishta. The hero being quite a cutie..some of the girls in our group went gaga over him.

Actually someday I should write on intricacies of tele-making. It’s a different ball game all together and a lot more hectic than film producing.

Heya…here comes the next tid-bits of my bollywood experience. From Bandra we then began our journey to Karjat to Asia’s largest bollywood studio – BIG ND Studio. It was earlier called ND Studios i.e. Nitin Desai Studio’s but recently Reliance bought a share in it and now it’s called BIG ND. For those of you who haven’t heard of him before, he’s one of the most renowned art directors in India – creator of Devdas, Jodha Akbar, The Legend of Bhagat Singh to name a few.

The journey to Karjat was long but I spent my time reading this lovely little booklet that had been provided to us. The guide kept referring to this booklet to show us photographs of the stars while showing us their homes. And coming to think of it, this made a lot of sense to the foreigners since it helped them correlate. Before we could approach Karjat, they also showed us an Audio visual on BIG ND studios. I hardly realized how time passed.

BIG ND is definitely a sight worth seeing. It’s so huge, you can actually spend an entire day inside it. Right at the entrance there were these life size elephants embellished with gold painting and beautiful lush green gardens. Must say they spend a fortune on maintaining this place.

We were then taken to their admin office where scenes of the movie Lage Raho Munnabhai were shot. Remember that scene where Sanjay Dutt is furious and enters Boman Irani’s office – that office was actually ND’s admin office!!

Then we saw something called ‘Bombay Street’ – what a beauty!! Mumbai 50 years ago has been captured so beautifully – every single nuance so minutely designed. The Nike Ad where you have these boys playing cricket over BST Buses and the movie Traffic Signal were shot here.

ND also has something called chalets. That’s where the stars stay while they shoot at ND. It’s beautifully designed and equipped with all the latest amenities our glamour icons are used to. Almost every star from Amitabh Bachan to Hrithik Roshan to Danny Boyle have stayed here. In one chalet they had these small frames put up on one wall, each one signed by some big wig who had ever stayed at ND.

If you are thinking how we managed with our empty tummies all this while…well as soon as we entered ND, a sumptuous breakfast awaited us and guess what, we actually ate at one of their sets called the Haveli. We Indian’s are used to living in such unhygienic conditions that I felt like a princess while on this tour. The amount of detailing we had gone into while designing this tour was just crazy, luxury coaches, hand sanitizers, wet tissues, clean restrooms, multi-cuisine buffet…the likes…

I can actually go on and on describing ND but I’ll give you a peek-a-boo of one last set…my favorite…sets of the movie Jodha Akbar. This was closest to my heart, the reason being just last month I visited Rajashtan where I saw the Amer fort – Jodha’s palace. Being a fan of Ashutosh, I have watched this movie a zillion times. It was so fresh in my head that the moment I saw the set, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. How could a set be so real and so perfect?? Hats off to ND!!

I was so excited that I probably ticked off the guide. Before he could open his mouth I kept rattling off all the details. This happened so many times that he finally let me take over the mantle for that particular set. I relished every bit of the attention watching my co-tourists listen to me attentively. But good old Johnny took it in his stride…

Details on my next stop over comes soon guys.. I feel like am writing Motorcycle diaries part II ..only thing I’ll name this ‘Rendezvous with Glam Land’

Selling without knowing what your product makes no sense. So last month I decided to find out what my company is actually selling. I went along with some tourists for our Bollywood tour and man….it was quite cool!!

The tour kickstarted in typical Mumbai darshan ishtyle – only difference being, this was a star homes darshan. It began with none other than the Bollywood Baadshah, Shahrukh Khan’s house (Mannat). We then proceeded to see the sultry Indian Goddess, Rekha’s house, my favorite Aamir Khan’s house, the chocolate boy Ranbhir Kapoor’s house to our sexy lass, Ms. Size Zero, our very own Kareena Kapoor’s house. I think more than half of Bollywood is housed at Bandra.

And for all those who still think that the big white building on carter road (Naivedya) is Abhishek Bachan’s and Aishwarya’s house….happy realization…it’s not!! Oh..sorry for that bubble burst..Its owned by some big shot called Rajan who is their ally.

I was earlier of the opinion that a visit of star homes would be of interest only to the NRI’s and foreigners, but seemed like quite the opposite, all thanks to our Tour guide. I must say he did quite a good job. He kept his flow of bollywood gossip stories throughout. I couldn’t fathom how much of a bollywood junkie could one be to be so up-to-date!!

Out next stop over was BIG ND Studio – my first visit to a Bollywood Studio, but I will fill you on this story later. Gotta catch up on some work..

Cya..