When romance & dance meet

Like the new seasons of most other reality shows, Nach Baliye 8 comes riding on a host of promos that promise a bigger, better and bolder avatar compared to the previous season. But how far does it deliver on what it promises? Here’s a look.

As far as a bolder look goes, Nach Baliye 8 literally sports a ‘Dabangg face’ in the form of tinsel town star Sonakshi Sinha as a judge. Oozing style and sporting a mega-watt smile with as much elan as she wears her spectacles, Sonakshi does manage to bring glamour and gusto to the show. Critics may question her credentials in judging a dance show, but her own claim that she “hasn’t come to judge, she’s come to entertain” sort of explains her role. And entertain she does, perhaps better than she grooves.

Giving Sonakshi company on the judge’s panel are choreographer Terence Lewis and film-maker Mohit Suri. Since the format of this show revolves around three broad benchmarks of dance, romance and entertainment, each of the judges is meant to evaluate the participants on these three parameters. Sonakshi judges the performances on the basis of entertainment value. Terence is intended to assess the dance element. Like he says, he is there to judge the “nach ka sach, nach ka nach,” and Mohit rates the performances on the ‘romance’ quotient.

Karan Tacker, in the role of an anchor, is rather low-profile and lacklustre. The saving grace comes in the shape of Upasana Singh, aka bua of Comedy Nights with Kapil fame, who co-hosts the show, infusing a dash of novelty and hilarity into the otherwise staid anchoring.

A show that rides on the USP of showcasing ‘romance-wala dance’, Nach Baliye 8 unveils star faces as its romantic jodis. Leading the pack are Divyanka-Vivek along with Aashka-Brent, Sanam-Abigail, Dipika-Shoaib, Pritam-Amanjot, Sanaya-Mohit, Bharti-Haarsh, Trupti-Siddharth, Monalisa-Vikrant and Utkarsha-Manoj.

While all the jodis put their best foot forward, bringing comic relief to the stage is the inimitable Bharti Singh. Along with putting on her dancing shoes with partner Haarsh, Bharti infuses a slice of comedy show into this dance reality show. Be it recreating the Aashiqui score with Mohit, or eliciting an ‘Aww’ moment from the judges with her love confession, Bharti again proves that she can be the most bankable telly face to prevent any show from turning monotonous.

A subsequent episode saw hunk Hrithik Roshan making a grand entry as a guest. He grooved to the remix, ‘Dil Kya Kare’, with all the beauties on the show. In terms of format, the show doesn’t really offer much to talk about, hence the content has to do all the talking. The show relies heavily on the star power of its participants.

To some extent, the star faces and their qualities, be it Bharti’s comic factor or #Divek’s (Divyanka & Vivek) romance quotient, extricate the show from being mundane. But other than a bit of star power, there’s scanty fresh fizz to save the show from seeming like old wine in a new bottle.