Influence of Classical and South Indian Dances in Bollywood

In a familiar language, the Indian Hindi film industry is known as Bollywood. It is primarily based in Mumbai, India. Most of the films made in Bollywood are musicals and full-length feature films. The films in Bollywood are made in different genres such as action, drama, suspense, and biopics. However, the most common and often seen genre is romance. A significant number of Bollywood movies are made in romance genre with adding some elements from other genres. These kinds of movies are widely accepted by the masses because of the music and dances. Bollywood films are famous for their song and dances from its very starting days. These songs and dances are entwined into the script. Which makes audiences to enjoy the film with a joy. Most of the bollywood movies have a happy ending. This kind of film ending is often regarded as one of the requirement. The Bollywood films success and financial profits are very much depended on the music, dance, and script. In the given picture , it can be seen a classical movie image from the film Awara (1951). In this picture, it can be seen the use of classical dance in one of the old Hindi films.

Indian classical dance has a huge influence on the Bollywood films. There are many Bollywood films such as Mughal-E-Azam, Guide, Pakeezah and many others, which used a mixture of numerous dance styles such as Kathak, Indian folk dance, Bharatnatyam, Kathakali, etc. As Bollywood films integrate these different form of dances in a song this also helps to show the diversity, richness, and unity in the culture. For example, in the film Chennai Express (2013), there is a mixture of several southern Indian dance forms in one song titled ‘Kashmir Main Tu Kanyakumari’. Dance forms such as Pulikali, which is a folk dance celebrated occasion of Onam festival in southern India. And Kathakali dance with some elements of other classical dance can also be seen in this musical song refered to picture.

Bollywood dances are very colorful and lively. Which makes it stand out from other dances around the world. There are also a large group of background dancers who are mostly performing the same dance styles as the lead dancers. Furthermore, the costumes play an important role. Most of the time the costumes changes with the change of the background settings in between of the dance scene. As Bollywood dance is a mixture of various Indian dance forms it needs a lot of energy to perform the dance steps. So sometimes a Bollywood song can have squats and dips of Bharatnatyam, eye movements of Kathak, the ‘Indian lotus’ positions and hand mudras from the book Natya Shastra. Hence Bollywood dance is a very hybrid form dance with amalgamates several other Indian classical dance forms.