Celebrity dancer Shakti Mohan’s recent dance video with Hollywood actor-dancer Phillip Chbeeb has caught everyone’s attention and left netizens awe-struck.
Be it quirky moves or experimenting with "contact improvisation", the 30-minute choreography has impressed viewers as Mohan and Chbeeb take dance to a new level.
“The idea was to create something new and experimental which brought me and Phillip together. I have been watching Phillip’s dance videos for a very long time and I really consider him a genius when it comes to body movement. He can create something phenomenal,” Mohan tells Sputnik.
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Feeling lucky to have collaborated with Chbeeb, Mohan says that the video was shot just after between 3 and 4 hours of rehearsal and long before the COVID-19 lockdown began in Los Angeles and India.
"I met him for the first time in my life and I was there sitting on top of him dancing (laughs). It was a little awkward but that’s how dancers work and we get really comfortable with the body. That’s how we started and it was so much fun,” she says.
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She calls it a "contact improvisation" dance genre which is a form of improvised dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness.
Mohan also had a little accident, falling on her head and leaving her concussed for a while.
“There was one move in which Phillip came out from underneath my legs and there I lost balance and fell back right on my head. I conked off completely for a couple of minutes and after putting some ice, I was fine. But my head was buzzing the whole day after that,” Mohan adds.
She is currently busy training aspiring dancers at her studio Nritya Shakti in Mumbai.
Over the past 10 to 20 years, she feels that there has been a big change and people have started to recognise that dance can provide a lucrative career and are sending their children to pursue dance professionally.
“There has been a big evolution in the entertainment scene. Apart from dancers getting to feature in music videos and Bollywood movies, they are also doing dance reality shows and dedicate their entire life to it. We have a huge talent pool of choreographers and dancers who are breaking the limitations and doing wonders in dance,” the star signs off.
