Shilpa Shetty learns Indian classical dance

Actress Shilpa Shetty is learning the Indian classical dance, Odissi, for a movie role. The actress with the sylphlike figure has been taking Odissi lessons from Guru Ratikant Mohapatra, son of legendary Odissi exponent late Kelucharan Mohapatra, for an India-China joint film venture, tentatively titled Desire . Along with Shilpa, actress Jaya Prada has also been taking lessons during the shoot of a song for the film in Kerala. “Odissi is complicated, and among all the songs I've ever shot, this has been the most difficult…It's been a hectic week in Kerala…This wasn't any ordinary song, it was an Odissi dance performance," Shilpa writes on her blog. Shilpa added that dancing to this song was much different from other songs she has done in films. “In the normal course, it's easy to rehearse a step and add your own style to it, not necessarily perfecting it, making it fun. But here I had to not only do a different dance form, I had to do it perfectly, making it look authentic and emote at the same time,” Shilpa wrote. Before shooting the song, Shilpa went through a week-long Odissi dance workshop under the supervision of Ratikant Mohapatra at Kollam in Kerala. According to her, the guru was a "hard taskmaster". “Desire” has Chinese superstar Xia Yu as Shilpa’s co-star. The movie, produced jointly by Sharad Hegde from Mumbai and Tracy Shiyun from China, is being directed by R. Sarath.