A Little Song and Dance

Ardeshir Irani's 1931 film, "Alam Ara" brought sound to Indian cinema. But it also brought something more important to the nature of "Bollywood" as we know it today: song and dance as part of the storytelling. Grand musical numbers with colorful costumes began to be incorporated into films, and became a way to underscore the plot of the film. The song-and-dance routines serve another purpose as well. In order to appease the film censor boards, oftentimes the only "sex scenes" in Indian films are the seductive and symbolic dances between hero and heroine!