Varun Dhawan trained for six months to flaunt those impeccable moves in ABCD 2. He chats with R Kaur
The invite mentioned Richardson & Cruddas as the venue for a promotional do of ABCD 2. It’s an iconic warehouse which is over one-and-a-half centuries old. We stood outside the entrance gate, double-checked the map, still dubious whether we were at the right place. With our heads in Sherlock mode, we figured that most of the dance-based movies have been shot at various underground stations, converted into clubs, warehouses, rooftops, et al. This, too, had to be somewhere unexpected. After walking inside the gates, we patted our smug selves for being right. The place was revamped with a cyclorama screen for a 4D effect with dancers rehearsing to ABCD-2’s tracks.
Backstage, we caught up with director Remo D’Souza. Is ABCD our answer to Step UpIJ “When I was working on ABCD, everyone thought I was copying Step Up but after the release, it teared apart those remarks. Nothing is similar because they don’t have stories in their films, they only focus on dance. I have a brilliant story, a true story and you’ll be able to decide once you watch the film whether I’m breaking the cliche of the struggling dancers’ stories or not,” he said.
The first installment of the franchise was all about young professional dancers but this time, D’Souza has picked up stars like Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor. “In the first one, I got the dancers and made them act, so why can’t I get the actors and make them danceIJ This time I got actors who can dance and the story demanded a strong actor because it doesn’t revolve around Vishnu sir (Prabhu Deva) but Suresh. I had to take an actor who could dance. I was doing a Student of the Year song when I decided to get Varun on board. I knew he was fantastic. When I cast him two years back, he was just out of Student of the Year, he was not a big star but just a newbie,” he told us.
In order to make sure that stardom didn’t compromise the USP of his movie, which is dance, D’Souza said he never treated Varun and Shraddha as stars in his film.
He said, “The first thing I told all my assistants and dancers was that when both of them walk in for rehearsals, don’t think of them as stars, think of them as one of you. I also told them that once you enter the rehearsal hall, I want you to be one of them. I don’t want you to be Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor, I want you to be Suresh and Vinnie (the characters both play in the film). That’s how they gelled with the dancers, they used to eat with them, dance with them, stay on stage and never went back to their vanity vans. They were fantastic and had a great bonding with the team.”
The choreographer/director will be doing an action film with Tiger Shroff but the ABCD series can have more movies, he hinted. “If a good story comes in and if I feel this can be ABCD 3, I’ll make it and cast whoever I want to,” he said. We then seated ourselves for an evening of glitzy affair organised by Pond’s Men and Disney’s ABCD 2 to unveil their latest variant — Pollution Out Face wash. The movie’s singer duo Sachin-Jigar, enthralled the audience with their compositions — Sun Saathiya and Hold My Hand.
Post event we again reached the backstage for a quickie interview with Varun. Here are excerpts:
How different is Varun from his character Suresh in the movieIJ
I’m very different. Suresh is an unbelievably good human being but Varun is not as good.
How challenging was itIJ
We trained for six months. The song Chunar is close to my heart and I’m doing contemporary. I think we have certain styles in Hindi films which we call Bollywood dancing and then we have the B’wood themed parties or B’wood nights in clubs. I don’t think the audience is exposed to different dance styles. Contemporary was challenging for me since I’m not used to it. I’ve done aerial silk and other styles but how good or bad is something you will decide.