Ganesh Hegde is a veteran choreographer, who has been sporadically venturing into Bollywood over the years. In his only release this year, Ganesh has choreographed two songs Va Va Voom and Dishoom Dishoom for Zoya Akhtar s period musical The Archies. In an exclusive interview, Ganesh talks about experimenting with dance forms in The Archies, working with Shah Rukh Khan and his daughter, budding actor Suhana Khan, and why he s not choreographing in movies that often. Zoya Akhtar has been the visionary behind refreshing dance songs like Baawre Luck By Chance , Senorita Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara , and Galla Goodiyan Dil Dhadakne Do . How challenged did you feel when she approached you for The Archies Zoya wanted to work with me even for Luck By Chance, but it didn t work out then. I m glad she came back to me for The Archies. I try to do something different with my songs. When I get a song, I try to make it look spectacular. Since I started my career as a dancer in 1991, I m used to doing these different forms of dance, from Broadway to hip hop to break dance to Indian classical and folk.
That came into handy when I had to design the rock and roll songs in The Archies. There was a skating song that Jim Carrey did solo back in the 1980s. When I watched it, I thought when we d be able to do a song like this. How tough was it shooting the skating song, Dishoom Dishoom The Archies is a film set in the 1960s. It has a different culture and flavour. So the song had to be in sync with that time of moviemaking. Zoya had this idea in mind that I want to do a skating song. The challenge there is that you need skaters who ve been doing it since their childhood. Because you need to have practised for years. But we had these seven kids who are doing a film for the first time. And skating was just one of the skills they learnt for the film. Zoya showed me the Reels of skaters across India, from cities like Pune and Bengaluru. But their styles of skating were very different so to bring them to a sync would have been a challenge. So I got professional skaters, who could serve as a good background.
Then we trained these guys for two months because it s very difficult to first balance the skates, act, lip sync, and then dance. Also to stay in a block, not drift away, to stay at the right distance from the camera. It s quite a tricky song if you ask me. It s not been done before for a reason. There are more cons than pros. But the cast worked very hard and made it look very easy. Because it s not. In both the songs, the choreography is so fast and demanding. But these guys look like a breeze. How did you achieve that ease With newcomers, the good thing is that they re really kicked and hardworking. I could get a lot of rehearsals with them beforehand. The challenge with Va Va Voom is that the choreography had to be circular because Zoya had imagined it to be inside a set that looked like a two tier cake. Also, we shot at night. People are tired then so we had to keep up the energy of everyone at the same time, even in the long shots. We couldn t shoot these songs with the regular cameras.
So our crew came up with innovative cameras to capture the choreography, like a cycle Doddy and a rickshaw Doddy. One constant collaborator throughout your career has been Shah Rukh Khan. From the Temptations tour to award shows to the intro song of Kaun Banega Crorepati Season 3 to films like One 2 Ka 4, Don, Ra.One, and Dilwale, you ve given some memorable performances.
