The Shakeela (2019) actress travels all the way to Kazakhstan to learn about a form of tribal belly dancing

By Mayur Lookhar

She’s known for starring in Indie films, Richa Chadha will show a different side to her in the Shakeela biopic.  The Bollywood actress, who earlier, learnt belly dancing for her role, travelled to central Asia in Kazakhstan to learn a form of tribal belly dance.

Apparently, it’s said that Chadha’s took the call to travel to the Central Aisa country after learning of the belly dance culture there.  And she learnt from the best Olga Meos. Chadha took part in a workshop that was conducted by the belly dancing artiste.

“I came across this particular style of dancing while doing some research for Shakeela. In the film Shakeela there is one song in the film in which there is little section of belly dance so i was going to research for it and I came across this particular style on YouTube and as I researched a little more on it i discovered that this style had very oriental routes not just Asians and Middle East or Gulf of Muslim countries,” Chadha said in a statement.

Commenting on her experience further, Chadha said, “There was a group of belly dancers gypsy women who have travelled to Eastern coast of India. It has elements of Odissi, it has elements of Kalbeliyan dancers.”

“So i went in purely from an academic interest and I ended up being a big of the style and i will go for many courses if possible because i just loved the experience of going and learning something. It was very enjoyable for me to just be a student again. I also do it to be fit I do it specially the stomach isolations and movements like that are very good to make your core strong and lot of this requires extreme focus. That’s why you see belly dancers don’t make a lot of facial expressions because they are focusing on that one particular muscle that’s need to twitch right so it’s very very difficult but it’s beautiful mystical art form” added the actress.

Directed by Indrajit Lankesh, the film is biopic on former adult actress Shakeela. The film is expected to release in 2019.