Location Diaries: Luck by dance 

Harish Kalyan shot for the dance sequences of his upcoming film, Dhanusu Raasi Neyargalae, by a Pondicherry beach. As the unit set up the lighting and the actor began rehearsing his steps, a crowd started gathering. It was a weekend and by noon, the crowd was threatening to be unmanageable. "This is the first time in my career that I have got a song with some heavy dance movements, so I wanted to get the steps right and was already stressed about that. The gathering of such a large number of people made me more tense, because, for previous films, I have been used to shooting at quieter locations."

Controlling the traffic was not an option too, as vehicles could not be stopped beyond a few minutes at a time. “We shot the movements in spurts, and even then, some impatient biker would speed behind us. This meant that we had to do the shot all over again! All this added to the delay." As the day wore on, the heat turned unbearable, and given the lack of shade near the beach, there seemed no respite. The vanity van too was parked well away from the shooting spot. It was a tough experience, he says.

For another song, the crew shot indoors, but the actor got even tenser for a different reason. “Though I am passionate about dancing from my school days and used to take part in dance competitions, I was quite stressed that day. It was my first song on a set. We had 20 dancers flown down from Mumbai, just for this song. The set was lavish and I felt a huge responsibility to make sure no time would get wasted because of me. Dancing on a set is tough because every dancer has to perfectly co-ordinate lip-sync, body movements and expressions. Any lapse by a single person can cause repeats and delays. After these experiences, I would say that shooting a dance sequence is far tougher than fight scenes!”