Popular film editor Aarif Sheikh, who won the National Award for ‘Samay – When Time Strikes’ and who has been the man behind the edits of acclaimed movies like ‘Makdee’, ‘Maqbool’, ‘Taxi No. 9211’, ‘Parzania’ and ‘The Blue Umbrella’, is making his debut as a director with ‘Let’s Dance’ releasing June 19, 2009.
“Although dancing is the DNA of the film, I was very sure that my story needed to be solid. It needed to hold on its own. Although I was working with mostly new artists, I never had any trouble extracting performances, as all my actors were perceptive,†says Aarif.
Introducing the US-born-and-bred dancing sensation Gayatri Patel, the film has the debutante playing a simple but determined dance teacher, who on her path to fame, changes course, to motivate a group of underprivileged kids.
“Gayatri is simply fab in dance and that’s why we call her ‘the dancing tornado’. I couldn’t have had a better dancer than her for a film like this,†quips Aarif.
Shifting base from US to Bollywood to pursue acting, Gayatri first spent time taking tips from theatre top-guns Satyadev Dubey and Makrand Deshpande, did an acting workshop with Veena Mehta and played the role of Ophelia in Neeraj Kabir’s play ‘Hamlet’. She also did three music videos for Venus opposite Inder Kumar and Jugal Hansraj, till one day, Aarif decided to launch her as the lead in his directorial debut.
Produced by Dr Arvind Patel, the film co-stars Ajay Chaudhary, Aqib Afzaal, Sugandha Garg, Asif Basra, Abhaas Yadav, Nikuunj Padaya, Paras Arora and Anjan Srivastav.
“I’ll never forget ‘Let’s Dance’. It’s imbedded in my soul. Every shot, every scene, every creative decision of mine,†says an excited Aarif.
