just vintage: Saroj Khan showing Shweta Kawatra what it’s all about as host Shakti Anand watches;

Ater nine weeks of relentless dancing on Nach Baliye 2, the STAR One show reached an all-time high on when choreographer Saroj Khan, better known as Masterji these days, walked up from the judge’s seat to show why she is still the best in the business.

It all started when Shweta Kawatra danced to Dil cheez kya hai in the solo round, without her partner Manav Gohil. She not only went blank on the stage forgetting some of her steps; she was criticised by all the three judges — Malaika Arora Khan and Kunal Kohli besides Saroj Khan — for getting the gestures wrong. At this stage, Malaika asked Saroj Khan to show the right way to do it.

Taking the stage in a flash, the choreographer danced to the opening lines of the Umrao Jaan song as the studio audience gave a thundering applause to the veteran dance director. Explaining the meaning of every hand gesture and eye movement, Khan said: “You need to be a very good dancer to even try dancing to songs like this.”

Later in the show Shweta and Manav were eliminated due to the least number of votes received from audiences SMS-ing and calling in. The couple had, of course, survived the SMS controversy where it was reported that they had bought 200 mobile SIM cards to send more votes for themselves. The morning they were eliminated, Shweta clarified her stance to The Telegraph. She said: “First of all we didn’t do anything like that and even if we did we are talking about a maximum of 4,000 votes here since you are allowed only 20 votes per SIM card. What difference do so few votes make in the bigger picture?”

It, of course, didn’t, since the two got voted out. But not before Manav was gifted a special Nataraj by Saroj Khan. Monday is her birthday and she wanted to gift the Nataraj — the very symbol of dance — to the best solo dancer of the episode. Call it compensation or just great dancing, Manav was indeed adjudged the best dancer of the day by the judges.

The episode witnessed some great dancing from the Tina-Hussain jodi with Tina dancing to the morbidly dark Zinda hoon main and Hussain doing an all-white version of Sukhbir’s Ishq. The show hosts were last year’s Nach Baliye participants Sai and Shakti Anand, who will dance themselves to Ishq samundar and Fanaa fanaa.