Fairy Tales Bollywood Style

Poster for "Cinderella - A Bollywood Ballet"

Since we're looking at Bollywood today, as little bonus for you I found an interview from 2008 with choreographer, Prashanthi Chitre, about her Bollywood version of Cinderella.

From the summary:

The musical numbers you see in Indian film, or Bollywood film, are telling a story. They do that with a mishmash of traditional Hindi, Latin American, and MTV dancing. But for many Westerners, that kind of storytelling is still tough to understand. Local choreographer Prashanthi Chitre grew up in India, and she loved Bollywood style dancing. Her lifelong dream has been to translate the joy and excitement she found in that dancing for everyone, especially non–Indians. But it wasn't until she saw her first Western ballet here in Seattle that she realized how she could do it. She tells Jeannie Yandel the story.

Indian beauty Deepika Padukone as Cinderella
(inspired by Annie Leibovitz's photo of Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella. Found HERE)

You can listen to the audio HERE - the interview starts 14 minutes into the recorded radio program. She talks a lot about why Cinderella works well for Indian audiences, interpreting the Indian joy of fantasy for Western audiences and - of course - dancing.

You can read more about the production of "Cinderella - A Bollywood Ballet" HERE.