Mutual funds and film dance

Switch on any film music channel and you see the same dance in every song. It’s invariably jerky and graceless. And many a time seems to have nothing to do with the song going on.

Anyway, one common characteristic of these dances is that their parts don’t seem have any sequence.

Now, in the nice old fashioned dances you sometimes had entire episodes of the story. Some were elaborately choreographed. Two prime examples that come to mind are Goldi Anand’s Guide (dances by Hiralal and Sohanlal) and Teesri Manzil (Herman Benjamin).

So why don’t we see dances like that any more (that is a ridiculously sweeping statement, but let’s stay with it)? I think it’s because a collage of ‘pretty’ sights can’t go very wrong. Lacking perhaps the time, talent and guts to do a really good piece, directors, chorographers and stars put together a sum of pretty parts that passes muster, though the whole is certainly not beautiful, let alone memorable.

It’s something like a mutual fund. It’ll never be as good as a blockbuster stock, but overall, it’ll do. Parts may even be excellent. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curate's_egg)