‘Now people respect dance as career’
New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) She has been dancing since she was 15 BCBG Dresses, but it is only now that Bollywood choreographer Geeta Kapoor feels the respect for this profession has grown manifold. She says it is a delight to witness the number of people wanting to take up dance as a career option.
“The respect for dance has increased over the years and that’s evolution for me. As a career option, it never existed, and it was a profession that one never considered feasible…it was an art form that people never thought respectable, but today that has changed,” Kapoor told IANS in an interview.
“People have started looking at it as a career option; they are asking us how they can become choreographers, dancers and assistants. So dance has evolved in brilliant ways for us. People now come with training, they have started learning dance and are accepting dance…it’s all very good,” she added.
Kapoor first started off as a dancer by joining choreographer-director Farah Khan’s troupe. She graduated to assisting Farah in many films like “Fiza”, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham”, “Saathiya”and “Main Hoon Na” and even assisted her for the hit number “Sheila ki jawani” from “Tees Maar Khan”.
She admits Bollywood dance has seen a lot of technical changes over the years.
“Bollywood dance has changed in terms of shooting, choreographing and making it look visually wow…but the dance is the same,” she said.
Nevertheless, she is happy that actors are now investing extra efforts for song sequences.
“Actors have become a little more hardworking, they have started coming for rehearsals, they have realised that it is all about competition at the end of the day. They have become conscious, which is good for us,” she said.
So far Kapoor has made almost all the actors of the film industry dance to her steps Christian audigier Dresses, but there is someone who she thinks can do wonders if he takes dance seriously.
“One actor I think who can dance if he really puts his mind into it is Riteish Deshmukh. He can do wonders, but he hasn’t got the right opportunity yet. He is a wonderful actor, he has a penchant for dancing, but he is not utilising it well,” she said.
More than for her dance, Kapoor became popular as a judge and mentor on Zee TV’s dance reality show “Dance India Dance”. She is currently being seen in the show’s third season and says she has always tried to keep the charm of classical dance alive through the show.
“I basically wanted to pump in classical dancing and I wanted it to be recognised, which is what I have always tried through all seasons of the show, because I think it is a form that’s lost somewhere,” she added.
Tribune Workers $32 Million Retirement Fund Accord
By Andrew Harris
(Updates with source of money in third paragraph.)
Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — Tribune Co., the bankrupt Chicago- based newspaper publisher Christian audigier Dresses, is contributing $4.45 million to the $32 million settlement of an employee retirement-fund lawsuit that it’s no longer a party to.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer today granted final approval to the settlement at a hearing in federal court in Chicago. The media company was dropped from the case after it filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008.
The balance of the settlement money will come from Greatbanc Trust Co. of Lisle, Illinois, which was trustee and fiduciary of the retirement plan, and from Greatbanc’s and Tribune’s insurers, plaintiffs’ lawyer Daniel Feinberg said.
No objections were lodged against the proposed settlement, Feinberg told the judge today.
Dan Neil and Eric Bailey, reporters for the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times, sued in 2008 on behalf of more than 13,000 plan participants after real estate investor Sam Zell and his closely held EGI-TRB LLC leveraged employee shares to take Tribune private in an $8.3 billion stock buyback.
Pallmeyer in 2010 ruled that Zell couldn’t be held financially liable for the workers’ losses and that only the bankrupt Tribune had received any of their plan assets. Greatbanc, which remained a defendant in the case, paid $1 million toward the settlement.
Court-Assisted Mediation
The newspaper publisher agreed to the settlement contribution after engaging in bankruptcy-court-assisted mediation with Greatbanc, their insurers, a committee of unsecured creditors and representatives of the U.S. Labor Department, according to court filings.
Bankruptcy court approval for the publisher’s contribution was granted in October, Feinberg said.
Gary Weitman, a spokesman for Tribune Co., declined to comment on Pallmeyer’s ruling. Charles Jackson, an attorney for Greatbanc Ed hardy Dresses, also declined to comment.
The case is Neil v. Zell, 09cv6833, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago). The bankruptcy case is In re Tribune Co., 08-bk-13141, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).
–Editors: Andrew Dunn, Glenn Holdcraft
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
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