Veteran dancer Rubina Khan recently spoke about her experience working in Bollywood and shared interesting stories about how actors behave on film sets. In an interview, Rubina talked about the stars treating the dancers with warmth, and recalled how some actors kept their distance during filming.According to Rubina, the actors like it Sanjay DuttAjay Devgn, Jackie Shroff and Mithun Chakraborty were among the humblest celebrities he worked with.“They never acted like stars around the dancers. They treated us like friends,” Rubina told Bollywood Thikana, adding that these actors would casually interact with the dancers without showing any arrogance.He also had warm words for Madhuri Dixit, recalling how established the actress was despite being one of Bollywood’s biggest stars. Rubina says that during a shoot, Madhuri sat on the floor with the dancers, cracked jokes and chatted comfortably with everyone.“It never felt like he was a superstar and we were just dancers,” he recalls.
“Mamta Kulkarni and Divya Bharti had an attitude in the early days”
Initially finding it difficult while talking about the actors, Rubina nominated Mamta Kulkarni and Divya Bharti.“I’m not going to say anything bad, but some of the actors were a little proud at first,” he said. According to Rubina, the dancers were often asked to stand a little further apart in the shots so that they would not be pushed into the crowded dance sequences.At the same time, Rubina admitted that the dancers themselves were quite mischievous at that age. “Sometimes we did it on purpose to get a little angry while taking the mistakes,” he laughed.
‘We danced barefoot in the extreme heat’
Apart from reminiscing about the behavior of the actors, Rubina also spoke about the difficult working conditions the dancers faced in the early years of Bollywood filming.He stated that one of the toughest shoots he has ever done was for the movie Prem starring Tabu. Sanjay Kapoor.“There was a sequence where we had to keep dancing in extreme heat without shoes. The floor was hot, and by the end of the shoot we all had blisters on our feet,” he shared.
“Short clothes meant double payment”
Rubina also made a shocking revelation about how dancers were paid in those days. She said the costumes often determined the payment the dancers received.“If we wore short clothes, we got special rates. Sometimes the payment was directly doubled,” he stated.She said costumes with haircuts, wigs, tattoos or elaborate styles came with extra payments because the base salary for dancers was so low.Rubina also shared that when she joined the industry she earned only Rs 175 per day. However, despite the decades that have passed, the salary of dancers has not improved significantly.“Twenty-five years ago we used to get Rs 3,500 for advertisements, and even today many productions pay the same amount,” he said.
