Akshay puts dancing shoes on LED floors

Actor trained for 10 days to perfect his moves on the ‘disco floor’ for an award function, says it was very challenging. Apparently, this type of dance floor has never been used in India for a live performance before. But Akshay was very keen to showcase it at a live event.

He is famous as the Khiladi Kumar in Bollywood. But on Tuesday, Akshay Kumar donned his dancing shoes in style. For the first time, Akki danced on a LED dance floor at the Superstar Awards. For the uninitiated, LED floors have panels that light up in different colours.

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Apparently, this type of dance floor has never been used in India for a live performance before. But Akshay was very keen to showcase it at a live event. To achieve this, he rehearsed for several hours over the course of 10 days.

“I was very excited to be doing an LED light performance at the award function. I must say that it was very challenging and required a lot of co-ordination and concentration. That’s why I practised for 10 days or so, and I am very glad it went off quite well,” Akshay says.

At the function, the actor not only danced on Desi Boyz’s songs, he also made his co-star John Abraham — who was sitting in the front row — shake a leg.

As for LED floors, performers such as Michael Jackson, Shakira and Justin Timberlake have prominently used the technology in the past. “Ganesh Hegde’s assistant designed the dance sequence. And it was very challenging but Akshay was more than keen to try all the steps personally,” says a team member of the organising committee.

Apparently, it’s considered difficult to dance on LED lights as it makes bright shapes, and one cannot pre-empt what shape is going to come up next while dancing. So the dancer needs to count the steps and then carry out the performance without any mistakes.

Also called disco dance floors, these are used mostly for fun. They were popularised for disco dancing by the 1977 John Travolta starrer, Saturday Night Fever, and directed by John Badham, who was inspired by a dance floor that he had seen being used in The Club, a private supper club in Birmingham, Alabama.