Shammiji and the Art of Dance

This blog was written 6 months back and now i am posting it as a tribute to the master .

Shammi Kapoor described himself as Renaissance man, retired actor and computer buff on Twitter.

He said he never learnt dance but his dance was a craze and still is all over the nation.Not a professional

it might amaze everyone how he could bring on that magic.Again he kept it simple,he was his own choreographer and was lucky enough to have Rafi as his voice or was Rafi Saab lucky to have Shammi bring life to his songs.It is still a million dollar question and its always better somethings are left unanswered .

Shammi Kapoor did not go about doing Freestyle dance like Jeetendra (was called Jumping Jack for his free style dance) but danced to the beats and rhythms of the song.It became Shammi Style.

When Rafi Saab died Shammi Kapoor said, "I am incomplete without Mohammad Rafi. I used to often go for the recoding of my song, which was sung by Mohammad Rafi, only because I used to like telling him how I would perform on this song on screen so that he can sing it that way. Even he liked my involvement".Dance is about passion and Shammi had the passion to dance .

Can anyone forget those random spastic jerks and jumping around,which mesmerizes the audience even today .You had Meena Kumari ,Vaijayanthi bala and other legendary  dancers in that era but still Shammi ji had created a space of his own.The Junglee hero who went onto play character roles later as he become overweight in the late 70's had set a trend for the generations to come.Shammi the dancer will always stay in our hearts .