Celebrated as one of Bollywood's most cult films, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's all-time classic Devdas featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit Nene and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan continues to remain one of the most notable works of Indian cinema. On July 12, 2020, the film completed 18 years since its release and Madhuri Dixit celebrated the day by remembering late Saroj Khan who choreographed ‘Maar Dala’ song.
Madhuri shared a video with Saroj Khan while they danced together on the song and wrote, “Today as we mark #18YearsOfDevdas I dedicate it to the force behind one of my finest dance performances in the film - Saroj ji.”
Furthermore, in Hindi, she wrote, “Shooting any song with Saroj ji was as great as ever. Devdas was a very special film, as all the songs in this film were very grand. I had never done a song like this with her before. We did a lot of Indian songs, but not such classical dance and Saroj Ji was a semi-classical dancer. She used to say, ‘It's a little Kathak style, so take care’. She is not with us today, but these are the things that I will always remember.”
“We worked very hard on all the songs of Devdas. We used to shoot all night; from 7 in the evening till it was morning. Whenever I worked with Saroj ji, we never thought how easy the steps can be, but always stressed how hard we can make it. ‘Maar Dala’ also had so many such moments which were very difficult, one such step where I had to turn on my knee and bow down and was supposed to perform the step in ‘Maar Dala’. But whenever I moved around on my knee, I slipped, but we were very sure that we wanted to do this movement like this. We were very excited about this song,” she added.
She further went on to say how difficult some of the movements were but Saroj Khan figured out how to express the song with facial expressions. Madhuri Dixit said that she will always remember it.
The 71-year-old choreographer suffered cardiac arrest and breathed her last at 1.52 am early on July 3, 2020.
Through the late 80s and 90s, Madhuri ruled the big screen with her performances. Not only that, audiences often looked forward to her dance sequences. Some of her career's biggest song sequences were choreographed by Saroj Khan. Their collaboration had become the most successful one as filmmakers often roped Khan to choreograph Dixit's songs. Their collabs gave us some iconic songs like 'Ek Do Teen' (Tezaab), 'Chane Ke Khet Mein' (Anjaam), 'Tamma Tamma Loge' (Thanedaar), 'Dhak Dhak Karne Laga' (Beta), 'Choli Pe Peeche Kya' (Khalnayak, 1993). The 00s started with 'Dola Re Dola' (Devdas) that won Saroj Khan a National Award. They later went onto collaborate on Gulab Gang and the last song she choreographed for Madhuri was 'Tabaah Ho Gaye' in Kalank.
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