When Raj Babbar had a hard time picking dance steps for a 'Hum Paanch' sequence

MUMBAI: Veteran actor and politician Raj Babbar recalled working in the multi-starrer film 'Hum Paanch' in 1980 with director Bapu and producer Boney Kapoor. He shared a fun memory related to a dance sequence in the film and joked about himself and his co-actors Nasiruddin Shah, Gulshan Grover, and Uday Chandra by calling everyone a "good dancer" except Mithun Chakraborty.

Though in reality it was just the opposite. He said: "Back then, during the 'Hum Paanch' shoot, there were about 1,000-1,500 dancers, and it was Boney Kapoor's first film. Nasiruddin Shah, Me, Gulshan Grover, and Uday Chandra were very good dancers who struggled with every move, while Mithun Chakraborty, who was a very bad dancer, nailed every step perfectly in just one shot. We all were tense seeing this. Our dance director at the time was Kamal(Kumar) ji, who was strict but a big star director."

Raj Babbar went on: "We didn't know how to dance, so we formed a syndicate and started dancing offbeat. Suddenly, we heard a voice, and we all decided to run away. Boney Kapoor saw us running away and came to us to talk and gradually we became friends. So, we then decided to let the crowd dance and we just did hand movements. It actually turned out to be a great idea."

A trained actor from National School of Drama, Raj Babbar has worked in a number of Hindi and Punjabi films. He gained a lot of popularity with the portrayal of a rapist in the film 'Insaaf Ka Taraazu'. He also acted in 'Aap To Aise Na The', 'Raaz', 'Prem Geet', 'Armaan', 'Nikaah', 'Waaris', 'Bodyguard', 'Force', 'Khiladi 786' among others.

Furthermore, when during 'The Kapil Sharma Show', the host asked him about his dancing experience in the film 'Inteha', Raj Babbar shared how he tried to convince Kama Kumar that he is not a good dancer and share an incident with Kamal about his NSD days when his music teacher failed to make him sing properly.

Raj Babbar told Kapil what he told to the choreographer: "There was also a period for music class in my NSD days. So we used to get training from a very experienced teacher, and he expected me to be a good learner and to do well. So he was playing a tune which I was supposed to follow but I was singing in a completely different tune. I did so badly that he was constantly looking for my tune and eventually gave up."

By sharing this incident with Kamal Kumar he tried to convince him that he is not good at music and dance.

"I sort of warned Kamal ji about this incident that he was very experienced in music and couldn't find a tune in my music," he concluded.

SOURCE: IANS