Salman Yusuff khan: Varun Dhawan has caught the beat

Asserting that Dhawan's ability to comprehend musicality has enhanced with Street Dancer 3D, Salman Yusuff Khan says actor has upped the bar in this edition

A decade after he bagged the winning title of Dance India Dance season one, and subsequently ventured into Bollywood, Salman Yusuff Khan admits that returning to the studio to train with 19-year-old dancers, is no mean feat. "Currently, Urban [dance] is popular; it's also what we have done in the film," says Khan, one among a group of seasoned dancers breathing life into Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor-starrer Street Dancer 3D. "The choreography is tough, because [I] belonged to a different school of dance. It's like a new language for the body," says Khan, who, along with the rest of the troupe, commenced training for Remo D'Souza's film a year ago.

If a dancer as seasoned as him can struggle to match the younger breed, one can only imagine the extent of effort that Dhawan and Kapoor would have needed to put in, to match, even outshine them. "Varun takes up challenges easily and is neither shy nor inhibited. If you observe his dance sequences [in the previous editions of the ABCD franchise], you'll notice that he has always been either a second faster or slower than required. This time, he's paid attention to the musicality and has reacted to it [accordingly]. He has now nabbed the timing. This change hasn't happened overnight. He's put in a lot of work."

As is with every film that puts its cast through intense physical work, Street Dancer 3D too required a nutritionist and sports medicine practitioner aboard, at all time. "[We were on] a zero-carb diet. Since we needed carbs to sustain the kind of work we were putting in, we would often have muscle cramps. We had a nutritionist on board, as well as a sports therapy expert. Regardless of whether or not we were injured, we'd have sports massages, once a week to prevent injuries. [Even then] each dancer would suffer from some issue, either [a] back ache, a knee [injury], or a [torn ligament]."

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