Just about everybody is dancing to Naatu Naatu from SS Rajamouli’s global blockbuster RRR – from fans in India and elsewhere in the world to voters at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that organises the Golden Globe Awards.
On January 10, the Globes named Naatu Naatu as the winner in the Best Original Song – Motion Picture category over the likes of Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Lady Gaga – a first for India. Among the people music composer MM Keeravani thanked in his speech was Prem Rakshith, the song’s choreographer. The honour was completely unexpected, Rakshith told Scroll.in.
Rakshith has been working on every one of Rajamouli’s films since Chatrapathi in 2005. Rajamouli’s brief for Naatu Naatu (it roughly translates into home-grown or native) was a number in which the Indian heroes out-danced their British colonisers.
When shooting for Naatu Naatu in August 2015 in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at the Mariinskyi Palace – which is also President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s official residence – Rakshith could only think of one thing: “saving myself”.
The song is one of the key moments in Rajamouli’s pre-Independence drama, which stars Ram Charan and NT Rama Rao Jr as fictionalised versions of the revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem. Charan’s Rama and Rao Jr’s Bheem join forces to overthrow a despotic British general. Before they do so,…
