It takes two to tango

Choreographer couple Chinni and Rekha Prakash were the first to get superstar Amitabh Bachchan to try the pelvic thrust in Jumma Chumma. In fact, after two decades of getting filmstars to dance to their tunes, they recently won their first National Award for Azeem-O-Shaan-Shahenshah in Jodhaa Akbar. They reminisce about five songs that challenged them as choreographers:



Song: Jumma Chumma
Film: Hum (1991)
This was our first song with Amitabh Bachchan. We were completely in awe of him and hence were nervous about meeting him. But the late Mukul Anand trusted us with this song. It became a huge hit and also won us a Filmfare.u00a0
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Song: Chota Baccha
Film: Masoom (1996)
This song is special because we had never really worked with so many kids before. There were 200 kids in that song, all of them in the age group of seven to nine. We were shooting in the sun and the kids would just run away to the shade without giving a damn about our shot. Making them dance in unison was a huge challenge.
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Song: Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi
Film: Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi (1996)
We flew about a 100 dancers to Russia. Shooting and dancing with a 100 dancers in the streets of Russia and on top of a parked plane got us into a little trouble, because of permission issues. But we accomplished it in the end. Needless to say, we had a blast.
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Song: Jhanjharia
Film: Krishna (1996)
The sand dunes were unbearable. Every time we sat down to have lunch, the wind would blow and our plate would get filled with sand. Amidst such conditions, we shot the song with 150 dancers and 150 camels. It was a huge set up. The actors and dancers were very cooperative and danced to our vision.u00a0
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Song: Azeem-o-Shaan-Shahenshah
Film: Jodhaa Akbar (2008)
This song is dedicated to Akbar. So, we could not use Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai in the song, though they are brilliant dancers. When Ashutosh told me that this song is from the people to Akbar, we asked for a 1,000 dancers. Ashutosh could understand our vision and had enough faith in us to give us this song.
The reason that this is the most difficult song we have ever done is because of its scale. We wanted it to be huge! And so did Ashutosh. We decided on 500 dancers and 1500 junior artists and rehearsed for two months. We shot for about 15 days. We were a great team and we made history!