Choreographers Navadevi, Navalakshmi were flown in for a Bhangra track in Anurag Kashyap’s upcoming directorial
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 27, 2018) 

Taapsee Pannu recently shot for a Bhangra number, “Kundali”, in Amritsar, as part of a wedding sequence for Anurag Kashyap’s upcoming romance, Manmarziyaan. Interestingly the number was choreographed by popular choreographers from the South, sister-duo Navadevi and Navalakshmi, the daughters of late choreographer and stunt co-ordinator Rambo Rajkumar.

Speaking of how the song came about the director revealed that it was a sangeet song shot in the course of one night and Taapsee rehearsed with the local dancers for a week before the shoot. “Navadevi was a costume assistant on the Tamil film, Imaikkaa Nodigal, I was acting in. One day, while waiting for my shot, I saw her dance and when I asked her about it, she admitted that she had wanted to pursue choreography, but after her father’s death, she quit to take on family responsibility and accepted this job,” reminisces Anurag, adding that when he asked her about her father, she told me she was Rambo Rajkumar’s daughter. “That day we had a small gettogether where she danced with the actress Tamannnaah Bhatia and was so spontaneous that I immediately asked her to choreograph a song for me in Mukkabaaz. That song, 'Blonde Balma' got edited out of the final print but I didn’t forget her and called her again to do a song for Manmarziyaan. That’s how the sisters came aboard our film.”

Sharing her experience, Taapsee says that she was pleasantly surprised when Anurag told her that he was getting two new girls from the South to choreograph the song. “I almost didn’t believe him when he told me this. I thought he was joking until one day I turned up at the rehearsal and realised he wasn’t. He wanted a new take on a sangeet because these Punjabi songs have been done to death in our films. That’s how he thought of getting new choreographers, not from the region or even from the Hindi film industry, to give it a refreshingly different flavour. It’s a beautiful song with peppy choreography and is an exciting watch. It’s the first time that Anurag has a proper lip-sync dance number in his film so expect something unique for sure,” she promises.