TV drama stars thrive in dark roles

By Ray Richmond and Matthew Belloni
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Gone are the days when being a leading man on television meant being the most likable guy onscreen.
TV actors now get to show their skills with dark, complex characters -- even on broadcast network shows. The Hollywood Reporter gathered six fine examples of TV's new actor elite -- Simon Baker (CBS' "The Mentalist"), Bryan Cranston (AMC's "Breaking Bad"), Laurence Fishburne (CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"), Michael C. Hall (Showtime's "Dexter"), Denis Leary (FX's "Rescue Me") and Bill Paxton (HBO's "Big Love") -- to discuss the grind of series work and the good fun in playing bad guys.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: YOU ARE ALL THE LEADS ON HOURLONG SHOWS. WHAT IS THE TOLL ON YOUR LIVES?
Bill Paxton: I drive from my house to make the call on Monday morning and I'm lucky to see my house before 2 o'clock in the morning on Friday night. It's a monastic kind of existence. I just stay in a hotel out there (in Santa Clarita, Calif.). I feel like a weird monk. The hardest thing is to go from such an intense work situation to just all of a sudden, that's it.
Bryan Cranston: What you'll find (on) all of these shows, we're all working 12 to 13 to 14 hours a day. If you can do a 12-hour day, you can go home and be with your family.
Simon Baker: Twelve hours, you can have an existence.
Denis Leary: On "Rescue Me," we do four-, six-, eight-, 10-hour days. When (showrunner) Peter (Tolan) is directing, we do six-hour days sometimes.
Laurence Fishburne: How is that possible?
Leary: Because these actors have been there from the beginning. They are all really good at their characters and they're fantastic with each other.
Baker: You just did five (seasons). We're a first-year show, so part of the struggle is constantly trying to find the tone within the writers' room (and with directors). Director A may be a fantastic director but doesn't necessarily get the tone. We like to try to do a little bit of mucking around.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: DO YOU GUYS HAVE A LOT OF FREEDOM TO SHAPE THE DIALOGUE OF YOUR CHARACTERS?
Fishburne: We've got a collaborative thing going on at "CSI." There is always a writer on set. You can always say, "I think we need to tweak this."
Michael C. Hall: When new people come in, if they only know me from the show they're like, "I'm afraid you might kill me." So they are a lot more open to my suggestions. (Laughter) And I don't sway them from thinking that. But I try to honor what the writers write. And my job, first and foremost, is to try to make work what I see there. With the voiceover element, I probably have more to say.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: DENIS, YOU ARE SORT OF A HERO TO THE FIREFIGHTER COMMUNITY, EVEN THOUGH YOUR CHARACTER IS AN INSANE PERSON. WHAT'S THAT ABOUT?
Leary: There are plenty of firefighters who don't like what we portray. My character is based on two guys -- one of them is a technical adviser on the show -- and the crew is based on a particular crew. They all know almost every single fire, event, is taken from stuff from those guys. We wanted to do a school bus fire and I called Terry Quinn, our technical adviser, and he said: "I'm at one now, I'll call you back." So that's where we get the fires. Even this year, we have a thing where one of the younger firefighters opens a bar with another firefighter, which actually comes from this crew. Their goal was to meet chicks. (Laughing) So there are chiefs that wouldn't want us to tell this stuff, but that's where the best stuff is. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Sitcom actresses juggle family, careers

By Ray Richmond
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - There are now more high-profile roles for women in primetime comedies than at any time since perhaps the 1970s heyday of "Mary Tyler Moore," "Maude" and "Laverne & Shirley."
The Hollywood Reporter gathered six of the funniest examples of the trend: Christina Applegate (ABC's "Samantha Who?"); Jane Krakowski (NBC's "30 Rock"); Julia Louis-Dreyfus (CBS' "The New Adventures of Old Christine"); Mary-Louise Parker (Showtime's "Weeds"); Amy Poehler (NBC's "Parks & Recreation") and Sarah Silverman (Comedy Central's "The Sarah Silverman Program") to debate how to star on a hit comedy series and keep your sanity.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: IS IT POSSIBLE TO SLIP IN AN ACTUAL LIFE DURING PRODUCTION OF A HIT COMEDY SERIES?
Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Well, I do a multicamera series, which I think is a lot easier than what these ladies are up to. We have two or three 12-hour days every week, but not five, which I think is what you have to put up with in a single-camera show.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WAS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU TO DO A MULTICAMERA SHOW FOR THE REGULAR SCHEDULE?
Louis-Dreyfus: Actually, it's pretty much just for the money.
Amy Poehler: The Benjamins. Call them the Benjamins.
Louis-Dreyfus: No, but it was important because while I adore single-camera comedy, and the look of it is so fantastic, considering the life I have with my kids I couldn't pull that off.
Mary-Louise Parker (whispering): What the f--- is a single-camera comedy?
Sarah Silverman: It's like a show where there isn't a live audience. It's kind of an old term. Single-camera and three-camera.
Parker: I really am this stupid, by the way. I have two kids, so it's tough. It limits you. I can't really do much of anything else aside from the show or I'd never see my kids. Or I could just have someone else take care of them. I mean, they're super-duper cute.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: DO THE MOMMY DUTIES MAKE IT TOUGHER FOR AN ACTRESS TO BE THE STAR OF A SERIES?
Poehler: It's a pretty crushing schedule for me, like 14 hours every day. I'm in every scene. Plus I'm the producer on it as well, so we're casting and writing and stuff all weekend. And yes, I have a baby, too. It's trying to figure out how to balance all of these things. You just depend on a lot of help and a lot of good advice from people.
Jane Krakowski: Tina (Fey) astounds me because she wears all of the hats on ("30 Rock") and is raising a child. She'll shoot the show all day and then go home and write until like 2 in the morning. And then her daughter will bop in at 6 a.m. going, "Hi Mommy!" I really don't know how she does it.
Poehler: She has a heroin problem. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Daughtry prepping new album next month

By Ann Donahue
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Chris Daughtry is famous -- hard not to be, what with the "American Idol" thing and the heartthrob thing and Grammy Award nomination thing and the gazillion records sold thing.
But he still tries to be a normal guy. He runs errands when he's home in North Carolina; a favorite pastime is taking his kids to the movies. And it was when he saw "Alvin and the Chipmunks" in the theater with his children that he realized his life had reached the point where weird is the new normal.
"Whoa! Whoa! This chipmunk is oversinging my song," he says with a wince, recalling the dog-whistle-octave stylings of Alvin on "Feels Like Tonight" in the film. "There were runs everywhere. I didn't even know what it was until the chorus."
It's been an impressive couple of years for Daughtry, both the man and the band, which includes Josh Steely on lead guitar, Brian Craddock on rhythm guitar, Josh Paul on bass and Joey Barnes on drums. The group's self-titled first album sold 4.4 million copies since its release in November 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and eventually hit No. 1 after nine weeks.
The album was a perfect storm of the commercial and the creative. It paired Daughtry's gigantic fan base from "American Idol" -- on which he was the fifth season's fourth-place finalist in 2006 -- with the set's instantly winning "Guitar Hero"-worthy guitar riffs and lyrics.
The group's second album, "Leave This Town," set for release July 14, gets a leg up from this foundation; it's another record full of songs that make you want to roll down the car windows and bust a vocal cord or two while trying to match Daughtry's gravelly wail. But there's one key change to the music: Daughtry -- the band -- created this album, instead of it being the work of Daughtry the brand.
The first album was created on the run with session musicians, while Daughtry was touring on the annual "American Idol" summer trek.
"Leave This Town," by contrast, was a much more collaborative process that came together in a couple of months, without any deadline pressure from the label.
The cover of the first album showed Daughtry alone, front and center, with blurred, anonymous bandmates in the background. On the cover of "Leave This Town," the faces of all of the band's members are clearly seen.
While Daughtry remains the band's primary songwriter, he worked with Steely and Craddock on several tracks, as well as longtime friends of the band like Nickelback's Chad Kroeger and Brian Howes, who co-wrote "Over You" for Daughtry's first album. The first single, "No Surprise," co-written with Kroeger, currently stands at No. 48 on the Hot 100.
"You're looking for something that's obviously going to be radio-friendly," Daughtry's manager Stirling McIlwaine says of the first single. "The second requirement is, 'Will it be a great launching point for the campaign? Will it tell people he's back? Does it have the signature Daughtry sound?' That's the song that raised its hand."
The leading contender for the second single is the ballad "Life After You," a plaintive take on loss that will start being worked to radio in the fall.
And while Daughtry's voice and rock riffs still play center stage to most of the album's tracks, several songs take some creative chances. Daughtry wrote "You Don't Belong" on his own; it's a hard-driving song that wouldn't sound out of place on an Alice in Chains album. And "Tennessee Line," featuring a fiddle and vocals from Vince Gill, fits comfortably in the country-rock crossover space, a la Lady Antebellum.
The band's camaraderie was very much evident in a recent encounter --they finish each other's sentences and mock each other with good-natured snark. Two of them are wearing the same boots, which of course draws jeers from the rest of the band.
Sure, Daughtry gets the lion's share of the attention -- that inevitably falls on the lead singer, Borns notes -- but Steely reveals that fans have made Web sites dedicated to all of the band's members. ("Yeah, like, we're the New Kids on the Block," Paul says.) Continued...
Source: Reuters

Brad Pitt baseball drama strikes out

By Borys Kit
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Just days away from the start of shooting, Columbia has taken Steven Soderbergh's baseball drama "Moneyball" starring Brad Pitt off the field.
Pulling the plug this close to production is extremely rare for studios but sources said Columbia's president of production Amy Pascal wasn't comfortable with the script, which had changed considerably since the movie was greenlit.
The decision, which was made Friday, mystified many since the picture was crewed up and scheduled to start shooting this week, with some wondering how issues with the script could give a studio cold feet so late in the game.
Steven Zaillian and Soderbergh wrote the screenplay (with the most recent barely a week old), adapting Michael Lewis' nonfiction book about the Oakland Athletics and their GM Billy Beane, who assembled a contending ballclub despite having a payroll much lower than other Major League teams.
Pitt and comedian Demetri Martin were the major actors cast, with other roles to be played by actual baseball players. Soderbergh also shot interviews with real baseball figures, which were going to be interspersed between the narrative.
Pascal had not seen the interviews and some insiders suggest there was a disconnect about the kind of baseball drama the exec and the filmmaker wanted to make. Pascal was leery, the sources said, fearing the film lacked emotion.
Pascal is a big fan of the book and allowed Soderbergh to shop the project over the weekend to Warner Bros., which once housed Soderbergh's shingle Section Eight, and Paramount, home to Pitt's Plan B. The companies would have to act fast as the production and its staff can only sit idle so long. If no one snags the package, Columbia could take another crack at it, and try to sync up Soderbergh's and the studio's vision.
(Editing by Dean Gooodman at Reuters)

Source: Reuters

Harold Ramis looks back at "Year One" from Day One

By Martin A. Grove
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - In the beginning there was nothing. Then Harold Ramis got an idea.
That was in the summer of 2005. His comedy "Year One" opened this weekend via Columbia Pictures with Jack Black and Michael Cera as lazy hunter-gatherers on a Biblical epic road trip after being kicked out of their primitive village. The film opened at No. 4 with a solid $20.2 million.
Inspiration? Mel Brooks' "The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Man."
"I loved the conceit of putting characters with a contemporary consciousness in an ancient world." It all sounded funny to Ramis, who definitely knows "funny" after "Caddyshack" and "Ghostbusters."
Another influence: A mid-'70s PBS documentary he recalled about how Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons co-existed for thousands of years and must have met.
"I was working with John Belushi and Bill Murray at the time at National Lampoon and I directed them in an improv," he told me. Murray's Cro-Magnon was "his usual contemporary hipster and John played the Neanderthal like a moronic thug." There was "a nice Abbott & Costello quality" that stuck in Ramis' head.
Inspiration struck: "Why not do something set in the ancient world and invest the characters with my own consciousness?" Genesis supplied the story.
"I imagined the hunter-gatherers living in a virtual Garden of Eden with one rule -- 'Don't eat the fruit from that tree.'"
Naturally, a guy like Jack Black "would have to eat the fruit. So it's not only the story of every comic hero, it's actually the story of every adolescent."
To Ramis, Genesis is "one epic journey after another as well as one dysfunctional family after another. So I set these characters in motion, expelled them from their Garden paradise."
The first people they meet are Cain & Abel. Genesis doesn't tell us much about them, so Ramis made it a classic sibling rivalry and Cain's a bit of a sociopath.
There was going to be an episode with Noah, but that was scrapped. Not only would it have been expensive to create a flood and build an arc, but "Steve Carell's 'Evan Almighty' had just been out and, I thought, sort of burned a lot of Noah."
But that didn't matter. There's lots of other good stuff in Genesis -- like Abraham & Isaac. "They're the next important people they meet. Despite every warning by Abraham that God will destroy Sodom for its iniquities, it just makes them want to go to Sodom even more."
In November 2005, Ramis was ready for a studio deal. He had "a loose three acts, which is all I ever want to tell anyway. I always feel people pitch too much. As long as a studio feels you can do it, they don't want to hear too many details."
But always give 'em a marketing hook. "It could be the greatest idea in the world, but if they can't sell it, it's no good to them." Continued...
Source: Reuters

Forecast fine for Jack White's Dead Weather

By Cortney Harding
NEW YORK (Billboard) - It all started with a lost voice and a missing tour bus. Alison Mosshart sings for the Kills, the dirty blues-rock band that opened for the Raconteurs last fall, when Jack White lost his voice.
White's hoarseness came near the end of a fairly cataclysmic tour for both White and Mosshart; the White Stripes/Raconteurs frontman injured his back, and the Kills' tour bus driver disappeared with the group's bus. (A week later the bus was found in a Los Angeles parking lot and the driver was arrested in February in Miami.)
"I was wearing the same clothes I'd been in for a week, because the bus still hadn't been found," Mosshart says. To get their minds off their mishaps, White suggested an impromptu end-of-tour jam session in Nashville.
"We had one day left with her before she had to go to New York and we were in Nashville together so we said, 'Why don't we record a 7-inch?'" White says. "We had absolutely no energy left and were completely burned out."
And so the Dead Weather was born, with White on drums, Mosshart on vocals, Raconteur Jack Lawrence on bass and Dean Fertita -- a member of Queens of the Stone Age who tours with the Raconteurs -- on guitar.
"We burned the candle at three ends, and all of a sudden we had four songs done," Mosshart says. "And then we just kept going and going, and all of a sudden, we were this new band with this new record. I couldn't believe how kind of natural it felt."
The "supergroup's" album, "Horehound," comes out July 14 on White's label, Third Man Records; it will be distributed by Warner Music. For an album that was spawned from frenzied late-night sessions, it doesn't sound at all slapped-together. It's a deep, sludgy collection that recalls early Led Zeppelin and includes a dark, bluesy cover of Bob Dylan's "New Pony."
"For that song, we were just seeing how we could attack it and what we could get from it," Mosshart says. "We were kind of assuming we wouldn't even put those songs out. But they turned out really fiery and electric, so we kept them. I don't think we ever would have said that we'll put a Dylan song on this album. We'd never premeditate that, but it just came out so powerful."
The band starts its U.S. tour July 13 in Washington, D.C., and will spend the rest of July and August on the road. It will play clubs on this outing, despite the fact that White's name alone could draw much larger audiences.
"It's good to pay your dues a little bit with the band," White says. "We would never be so presumptuous to do something like move to Nashville and try to book our first gig at the Ryman Auditorium."
The band members rush to add that the birth of their new project doesn't signify the death of the Kills, the Raconteurs or the White Stripes. Sprawled on a velvet couch in a suite at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel, Mosshart takes another drag on a cigarette and explains that the Kills are in the process of writing their fourth release, after putting out an expanded version of their first album, "Keep on Your Mean Side."
WHITE'S RECORD STORE
For his part, White is taking on James Brown's title as "the hardest working man in showbusiness." He recently opened a Nashville music complex that recalls the setup of old-school labels like Stax: recording studio in back, record store in front, office on the premises. His excitement about his new building is contagious, and his eyes brighten and he leans forward when he explains his vision for the label. And while plenty of musicians talk about their love of vinyl, White set up the Third Man store to sell it exclusively.
But not as a collector's item. "We gave all the people who attended the Third Man opening-night event 7-inches with a handmade cover that had pictures of the band," he says. "Right up until the end I was mixing the album, while behind me three people were painting and cutting up photographs and making records. We gave those to people in the record store of the Third Man building that day. We had them in white envelopes and people were afraid to open them and I was like, 'Cut those open! Play these records!'"
Besides the store and studio, the Third Man complex contains a space for photo shoots -- complete with dark room -- and an area for live performances. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Sandra Bullock tops box office after 10 years

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sandra Bullock achieved her first No. 1 movie in 10 years at the weekend box office as moviegoers across the United States and Canada said yes to "The Proposal," which also marked her biggest opening.
The Walt Disney Co romantic comedy sold an estimated $34.1 million worth of tickets during the three-day period beginning June 19, the company said on Sunday.
"It definitely met and exceeded our expectations," said Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group. "In a summer with a lot of sequels, it's always nice to have an original movie."
"The Proposal" also earned $10 million from 10 foreign markets, with No. 1 bows in Australia ($3.3 million) and Russia ($2.8 million) leading the way.
Bullock last went to No. 1 in North America with the 1999 film "Forces of Nature," which co-starred Ben Affleck. Her previous best opening was $17.6 million for her most recent film, "Premonition," in March 2007.
The 44-year-old actress stars as a book executive who fakes an engagement to her lowly assistant (Ryan Reynolds) to avoid deportation to her native Canada. The laughs ensue when she meets his parents, with "Golden Girls" veteran Betty White stealing the show. Anne Fletcher ("27 Dresses") directed. Disney declined to reveal the budget.
Critics' reviews were mixed, but exit surveys were strong, Disney said. Men accounted for 37 percent of the audience, a surprisingly large turnout for a romantic comedy.
Its reign likely will be short-lived, though, with "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" opening worldwide on Wednesday through Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures.
"HANGOVER" PERSISTS
After two weekends at No. 1, "The Hangover" slipped to No. 2 with $26.9 million. The hit bachelor-party comedy now has banked $152.9 million, according to Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros. Pictures.
The only other new release in the top 10 was the Jack Black prehistoric comedy "Year One," which came in at No. 4 with $20.2 million, in line with the expectations of its distributor, Sony Corp's Columbia Pictures.
The $60 million film, from "Groundhog Day" director Harold Ramis, stars Black and Michael Cera ("Juno") as hunter-gatherers banished from their primitive village.
Just ahead of it, at No. 3, was Disney's Pixar-produced cartoon "Up" with $21.3 million. It has earned $224.1 million after four weekends, surpassing the $223.8 million lifetime total of Pixar's 2008 Oscar-winning smash "WALL-E."
Zoradi said he expected "Up" to pass 2004's "The Incredibles" ($261 million) to become the second-biggest Pixar film after 2003's "Finding Nemo" ($340 million). Comparative data are not adjusted for inflation.
Rounding out the top five was Columbia's "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" with $11.3 million. Denzel Washington and John Travolta star in the hijacking thriller, which has earned $43.3 million after 10 days.
Director Woody Allen's 40th film, "Whatever Works," starring "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, earned $281,000 from nine theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The best comparison is with his 2005 comeback, "Match Point," which opened to about $400,000 in eight theaters on its way to $23 million. "Whatever Works" was released by Sony art house unit Sony Pictures Classics.
(Reporting by Dean Goodman; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: Reuters

"Transformers" director rips studio in leaked memo

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Powerhouse Hollywood director Michael Bay, who returns to theaters worldwide on Wednesday with a "Transformers" sequel, has blasted the marketing efforts of the film's studio, Paramount Pictures.
In a memo sent last month to top brass at the Viacom Inc unit, and published on Sunday by celebrity gossip Web site TMZ.com, Bay complained there was no buzz surrounding "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."
"Right now we are not an event. We are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation. Remember back to 'Spider-Man 2' -- it was everywhere," he wrote.
Bay added that advance word on the $200 million robot extravaganza in publications like Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times had been an "abject failure," and he described as "lame" a plan for him to preview a small clip at the MTV Movie Awards this month.
"I cannot figure if this is a cash issue with your company? Is there some clever idea why we are not spending? I'm not sure," he said. "I'm sure though the movie will do fine, but not to your internal expectations because right now we are fooling ourselves by being cocky."
But in a second e-mail, sent June 6, Bay compared Paramount to a family and thanked the executives for "busting your butts and bringing your 'A game' for the release of Transformers."
A Paramount spokeswoman declined to comment other than to point out that the latter e-mail "clearly speaks to a differing stance than the former." Two of the top production executives on Bay's e-mail list were coincidentally ousted on Friday amid a failure to speed up production of in-house movies.
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is the follow-up to "Transformers," which earned $708 million worldwide in 2007. Bay, 44, recently told Forbes magazine that he earned $80 million from that film.
Early reviews of the latest film have been unfavorable. In Britain, where the film debuted at No. 1 this weekend, The Guardian newspaper said the 150-minute movie was "like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan."
(Reporting by Dean Goodman, Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Source: Reuters

Indian films in New York create Bollywood-on-Hudson

By Jui Chakravorty Das
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Millions of moviegoers in India recognize the neon signs of Times Square as easily as the Taj Mahal, due to the growing popularity of "Bollywood" movies shot in the United States, particularly in New York.
By making movies in one of the world's most expensive cities, producers risk big losses but can score big rewards by appealing to India's fascination with foreign worlds.
Despite its high costs, New York, more than any city outside India, offers easy access to resources such as Indian extras, trained Indian dancers and Indian production teams, say experts on Bollywood, the $2 billion-a-year industry known for movies featuring elaborate music, costumes and sets.
The term Bollywood combines the names of India's commercial and Hindi film capital Bombay, now renamed Mumbai, and Hollywood, the global center of commercial movie production.
Such films have occasionally been made in cities such as Miami, Johannesburg and Sydney, but nine mainstream Bollywood movies have been shot in New York since 2003, eight of them since 2006 alone. Two more are in the offing.
That number is significant, given that the scripts are based on stories that could have just as easily been shot at home, experts say.
Coming this month from one of India's largest production houses is a movie titled "New York," which capitalizes on the city's instant recognizability, director Kabir Khan said.
"One shot of New York, and you know this is New York," he said.
Big-budget Bollywood productions, using distinctive backdrops such as the Brooklyn Bridge or Grand Central Terminal, cost between $12 million and $15 million. This is expensive by Indian standards, but just a fraction of the cost of a mainstream Hollywood film, which often tops $100 million.
A similar movie made in India would cost half of that or less, said Atit Shah of New Jersey-based Bollywood Hollywood Productions, which provides crews, equipment, extras and vendor agreements for U.S.-based Bollywood shoots.
One of the earliest hits shot in New York, "Kal Ho Naa Ho" or "Tomorrow May Never Come," cost about $7 million to make, according to director Karan Johar, a pioneer of New York-based Bollywood dramas. The movie made about $13 million.
"Kal Ho Naa Ho" featured a Hindi rendition of Roy Orbison's 1964 classic song "Pretty Woman" shot in the New York Borough of Queens, with dozens of local Indians as extras. The ethnically diverse Queens is home to more than 50,000 Indians.
LOOKING FOR CAUCASIAN DANCERS
Bollywood movies typically have a half dozen songs, and filmmakers look for Caucasian rather than Indian dancers to reinforce the foreign locale, said Pooja Narang, founder of a New York-based Bollywood Axion dance company.
"They usually ask for white dancers trained in a variety of styles, including Indian," she said. Continued...
Source: Reuters