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The return of the dancing diva

— Photo: AP

DANCING TIME, AGAIN: Madhuri Dixit in a still from ‘Aaja Nachle.’

MUMBAI: American homemaker and mother of two sons Madhuri Dixit is back in Bollywood after a five-year break, with a film centred on her forte — dancing.

“It makes me a little nervous whether people will accept me again,” she said ahead of the worldwide release of her movie Aaja Nachle, or ‘Come Let’s Dance,’ on November 30. “It makes me nervous, but I’m excited.”

Dixit plays a choreographer who after a decade in New York returns to India to save her dance teacher’s school from being razed for a lucrative development.

She was last seen on the big screen in 2002, when she played a courtesan in a saga of doomed love in Devdas. Then she took a break from acting to raise her two sons with husband Shriram Nene, a surgeon, in Denver, Colorado.

Dixit, 42, said that moving to the U.S. was a refreshing change from her fishbowl existence in India, where she could never walk down a street or shop at a store without being mobbed.

Her brown eyes sparkled when she laughed and said that her anonymity was short-lived due to a large presence of Indians in the U.S. South Asian parents at her son’s preschool soon began to recognise her, and curious American neighbours sought DVDs of her own old movies.

“It’s a novelty for them to know someone famous in India because they meet other Indians who tell them, ‘Oh, we are great fans, could you please get us an autograph,’” Dixit said during an interview in Mumbai on Thursday. “The curiosity is very positive,” she added.

Dixit said she missed her acting career at times, but not the celebrity that went with it. “Well, I missed my craft. I’ve never been part of the other paraphernalia that comes with it.”

One of Bollywood’s best- known actresses, in the 1990s she was ranked the country’s top actress by movie magazines. Graceful Indian classical dancing, sizzling Western moves, and strong acting in largely romantic films were her ticket to fame.

She first danced her way to stardom in 1988 with the song ‘Ek, Do Teen’ in the film Tezaab, or ‘Acid.’ She went on to become India’s highest paid actress with such hits as Hum Apke Hain Kaun, or ‘What Am I To You,’ and Dil To Pagal Hain, or ‘Heart is Crazy.’

Now slimmer, fitter and more radiant than in her younger days, she said she is open to more movies as long as she can juggle her children’s schedules with work. “Another movie depends on a lot of factors — on my kids, how I manage it, where they are going to shoot,” she said. “I don’t want to compromise my kids in any way. I have to make sure they are comfortable before I take up any assignment.” — AP

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