Nora Fatehi is undoubtedly the best female dancer we have in Bollywood today. The 29 year old young, Canadian beauty is known for her mindblowing dancing skills and item songs that keep topping the music charts. With each new song, she sets the dance floor on fire and honestly, it’s quite difficult to take your eyes off her. Though in no way has her journey to stardom been an easy ride. She had recently opened up about her journey to the movies in an interview. Always wanting to be an actress, she juggled many jobs during her young days, having to support her family and finally decided to come to India to join films. Incidentally, her first assignment was a modeling job in a Dove commercial.
Nora Fatehi made her Bollywood debut in 2014 with the film ‘Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans’. After a brief stint in Telegu cinema, she first got noticed in the item song ‘Manohari’ from the magnum-opus ‘Baahubali: The Beginning’. The song that actually catapulted her to fame though, was the item sequence ‘Dilbar’ in 2018’s Satyameva Jayate starring John Abraham and Manoj Bajpayee in the lead. This song is actually a remix of the Sushmita Sen original from the 1999 movie ‘Sirf Tum‘. Nora’s dance moves caught everyone’s attention and the song has crossed a billion views on YouTube! She quickly followed up her success with another two brilliant performances, ‘Kamariya’ from ‘Stree’ in 2018 and ‘O Saki Saki’ from ‘Batla House’ in 2019. While the former has crossed 270 million views on YouTube, the latter from the John Abraham starrer is nearing 500 million views on YouTube!
Nora then appeared in a number of dance videos, starting with the Arabic version of ‘Dilbar’ (that’s nearing 140 million views), ‘Pachtaoge’ with actor Vicky Kaushal (that’s nearing 550 million views), ‘Naach Meri Rani’ with Punjabi singer Guru Randhawa (also nearing 550 million views), ‘Chhor Denge’ with singer Parampara Tandon earlier this year (that’s crossed 350 million views) and the latest music video ‘Zaalima Coca Cola’ from the movie ‘Bhuj: The Pride of India’ featuring ace singer Shreya Ghoshal, that came out just two weeks ago and is all set to touch 70 million views any day now!
What is truly unbelievable with this star performer is that she is a self taught dancer! Can you believe that? In a recent interview with Anupama Chopra, Nora mentioned, “I have a knack for the arts. I like to dance, I like to act, and because I didn’t have the resources to learn, I had to learn myself. I remember I used to lock myself in a room and YouTube all these performers that I really liked at that time. I really liked belly dance and it is something that is normal in my culture. Everyone belly dances. But I wanted to take it to another level. I started watching these professional dancers. There was one, in particular, her name is Didem, she is from Turkey. I used to watch, rewind, stop, rewind, look in the mirror, do a move. If it’s not coming, try again the next day until that one move comes. And then it just went on from there to watching Beyonce videos all day, every day. I’m also a huge Madhuri Dixit fan so I used to watch all her songs.”
Well, her dream of acting came true with a brief role in Salman Khan’s 2019 film ‘Bharat’ and Remo D’Souza’s ‘Street Dancer 3D’ starring Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor that released last year. The songs ‘Garmi’ and ‘Nachi Nachi’ from this film became instant hit dance numbers, with the former nearing 280 million views and the latter nearing 220 million views on YouTube! Her latest release is the Ajay Devgn starrer ‘Bhuj: The Pride of India’ that released today on Disney+Hotstar. She will also feature in the upcoming John Abraham starrer ‘Satyamev Jayate 2’, a sequel to the earlier released hit film. We hope to continue seeing her in amazing dance sequences ahead too, because her back flips and 360 degree body turns are something out of another galaxy! No wonder Nora Fatehi is rightly referred to as India’s best female dancer, hands down!