Posted:
@TM: This is a wonderfully balanced post, thank you!
I'll be honest, I am a fan of the man's acting and started watching the show because he was on it. Otherwise I try to steer clear of reality shows in general. But that being said, I completely agree with everything you said. Somewhere, there is a disconnect between Gurmeet and Shampa, or more accurately Gurmeet and the dance that Shampa is trying to get out of him. I have seen him dance before and while he is no professional, he is pretty good, and I have never seen him as unsure and "trying too hard" as I have on this show.
When I first watched the act, I really liked it but then I came on the forum and saw the negative comments and they made me think. So I went back and watched his performance again online and I realised the reason I had liked it so much was because there was a lot of Gurmeet doing what he does best and what I love him for, acting. Once I focused on his dancing, specifically rather than the act in general, I realised that his dancing was technically very poor but more importantly, he wasn't connecting with the piece and the concept as a whole.
One word defined the act for me: INCONGRUOUS.
The elements were there. There was energy, there was emotion, there was a narrative (sort of) but they were not connected to each other and the piece lacked flow. It is impossible to say if Shampa's concept itself was disjointed into these three distinct pieces, or whether Gurmeet failed to understand the thread that connected them.
We obviously can't say what went wrong, or whether it was GC or Shampa's fault without access to their rehearsals, but it is pretty certain that there was a disconnect there. Gurmeet was not able to understand what Shampa was trying to convey through the piece or conversely, he was not convinced by it. Again, this lack of conviction could both be in the dance itself or his ability to execute it but these uncertainties should be dealt with ASAP to improve the impact of his performances.
One of the hardest things about teaching dance is being able to communicate it to people who are not immersed in the art. The art of weaving emotion into movement is something that dancers sometimes take for granted, which does not come naturally to people who are not intensively trained. It is possible that Shampa was able to communicate her ideas to Sushant more easily because he is a highly trained dancer himself. I watched some of their acts last night after the disappointment of the devdas thing and it is clear that Sushant gets this whole communication through movement thing without being taught. Gurmeet, on the other hand, needs to be taught because like you said, that is the depth that a platform like this demands. He is an actor and from what I saw yesterday in his act, the acting parts were great, but totally disjointed from the more literal dancing parts, when in fact, the acting should be part of the dancing and not vice versa.
I sincerely hope that more time together lends them the rapport that allows this understanding to happen, because one of the things I like about GC's acting is that he really throws every cell of his body into a scene and I would love to see that conviction and commitment translated into dance.
I'll be honest, I am a fan of the man's acting and started watching the show because he was on it. Otherwise I try to steer clear of reality shows in general. But that being said, I completely agree with everything you said. Somewhere, there is a disconnect between Gurmeet and Shampa, or more accurately Gurmeet and the dance that Shampa is trying to get out of him. I have seen him dance before and while he is no professional, he is pretty good, and I have never seen him as unsure and "trying too hard" as I have on this show.
When I first watched the act, I really liked it but then I came on the forum and saw the negative comments and they made me think. So I went back and watched his performance again online and I realised the reason I had liked it so much was because there was a lot of Gurmeet doing what he does best and what I love him for, acting. Once I focused on his dancing, specifically rather than the act in general, I realised that his dancing was technically very poor but more importantly, he wasn't connecting with the piece and the concept as a whole.
One word defined the act for me: INCONGRUOUS.
The elements were there. There was energy, there was emotion, there was a narrative (sort of) but they were not connected to each other and the piece lacked flow. It is impossible to say if Shampa's concept itself was disjointed into these three distinct pieces, or whether Gurmeet failed to understand the thread that connected them.
We obviously can't say what went wrong, or whether it was GC or Shampa's fault without access to their rehearsals, but it is pretty certain that there was a disconnect there. Gurmeet was not able to understand what Shampa was trying to convey through the piece or conversely, he was not convinced by it. Again, this lack of conviction could both be in the dance itself or his ability to execute it but these uncertainties should be dealt with ASAP to improve the impact of his performances.
One of the hardest things about teaching dance is being able to communicate it to people who are not immersed in the art. The art of weaving emotion into movement is something that dancers sometimes take for granted, which does not come naturally to people who are not intensively trained. It is possible that Shampa was able to communicate her ideas to Sushant more easily because he is a highly trained dancer himself. I watched some of their acts last night after the disappointment of the devdas thing and it is clear that Sushant gets this whole communication through movement thing without being taught. Gurmeet, on the other hand, needs to be taught because like you said, that is the depth that a platform like this demands. He is an actor and from what I saw yesterday in his act, the acting parts were great, but totally disjointed from the more literal dancing parts, when in fact, the acting should be part of the dancing and not vice versa.
I sincerely hope that more time together lends them the rapport that allows this understanding to happen, because one of the things I like about GC's acting is that he really throws every cell of his body into a scene and I would love to see that conviction and commitment translated into dance.
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