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Chaya Unnikrishnan (DNA; September 5, 2016)

He has judged shows like Cinestars Ki Khoj and India’s Best Dramebaaz, and now for the first time he will be on the panel of a dance show. The director confesses that he has no knowledge of the technicalities of dancing, and will represent the lay audience. Here he talks about his experience on the show, so far...

When you were approached to judge Super Dancer, what were your thoughts considering you have no connection with dance?
These kind of shows have been offered to me earlier, too, but I always turned them down because I didn’t know what I would do on it. But this time it was about kids’ dancing, so I didn’t reject it immediately. I thought about it for a day or two. Dance is not just about the technicalities — doing the right step at the right time. It is also about emotions, the flow and the X factor. And as a filmmaker I can judge on all those apects. With Geeta Kapur, who knows all the technicalities and Shilpa (Shetty), an experienced dancer, it is perfectly balanced. Having said that, I was nervous in the beginning. I didn’t know what I am doing, but slowly got into the groove looking at it as an audience.

How has the experience been so far?
Very humbling. There are kids from places like Chhattisgarh and Assam and most of them are from humble backgrounds. Dance, for them, is an escape from the miseries in their lives. They dance in search of happiness and not to be a part of the reality show. They are just passionate about dancing. There was this 10-year-old kid who was hearing and speech impaired, but dances extremely well. He cannot hear the music, or the beats, for him it is all white noise, yet he danced and performed better than some kids. When I had directed Barfi!, I had interacted with several such kids and I consider them as normal. There is no sympathy angle to it. There was an argument on the panel about whether he should be on the same platform as others, but for me he is normal, so we gave him a nod to go to the next round.

Jagga Jasoos got delayed again, is that the reason you have decided to judge this show?
Actually, it all came around nicely. Most of the shooting of Jagga Jasoos is complete. Only some portion is remaining, which I will do later. In December I am going to start the sequel to Life... In A Metro. So, this was a perfect time for me to judge a TV show. I love interacting with people, which is great in a show like this, else I would have sat at home.