If you don’t want to dance, don’t dance

I watched Spyder last night. One of the lowlights of the film is its lead, Mahesh Babu, dancing. What he basically does is pump his fists downwards, one at a time, and stomp his feet, again one at a time. He then makes a sideways movement to the left and then one to the right. He concludes by just staring at the camera with his sunglasses on. He basically repeats this routine over and over again, in all the songs. Sometimes he gets a bit more adventurous and attempts a stylized walk or rapidly moves his feet as if he were spot-jogging or doing some sort of HIIT.

I’m not saying Mahesh is inept at dancing. In fact, he used to dance pretty well in some of his older films — Pokiri, Okkadu, Khaleja to pick a few. But, of late, I think he just got tired of having to dance in films. He doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t enjoy doing it. He does it because it’s a thing that heroes have to do. He would avoid it if he could, but is forced to do it. I ask, why? Why do you have to force yourself and do such a bad job it?

If you are a Telugu film hero and you don’t want to dance, just don’t! Who’s asking you to? Oh, the fans/audience? Trust me — they would rather you pick a better script or experiment more than torturing yourself and also them with painfully bad dances. The director and the producer? Most of them seem to know jack squat about what works and what doesn’t work, so why trust them with this? Just do whatever you are comfortable doing.

Have you seen the memes going around? They are brutal. It doesn’t have to be this way. Not just Mahesh, Pawan Kalyan should also stop dancing. In his most recent film, Katamarayudu, some of the songs and the dances were so bad it was an exercise in masochism. While we’re at it, anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to dance should stop. Even those who can should use their best judgement and reconsider having all those songs. Take NTR’s latest film, Jai Lava Kusa. Wasn’t the film better off without all those songs? Why do we need a “hero intro” song? Why do we need an “item” song? Why do we need a song in a glossy set? They add nothing. They don’t entertain. Just stop.