Madhuri charms audience in "Aaja Nachle"

MUMBAI: Nimble-footed Madhuri Dixit danced her way into the hearts of Indian audiences who heaped praises on the diva for her performance in the musical "Aaja Nachle".

"Our actors should learn from her how to remain beautiful and graceful," Anil Prabhakar, an enthusiastic 36-year-old fan of Dixit said. "She is over 40 but look at her acting and her dancing. It is still mind-blowing. She is the best."

Looked upon as the Indian film industry’s dancing queen, audiences feel Dixit is at her best in "Aaja Nachle" where she plays the role of a divorced choreographer who returns to India to save a theatre where she had first learnt to dance.

"The story is very good, very new," housewife Nimisha Patel said. "Everyone has acted really really well but Madhuri rocks."

Playing the protagonist in the film by director Anil Mehta, Dixit makes a comeback to cinema after six years.

"After a long time I have seen a woman protagonist in an Indian film. I hope it does well,” Ashutosh Rane, 32, said.

The film, which opened to audiences today, shows Dixit getting a call from India asking her to return to her native town, Shamli, as her mentor was critically ill.

She returns to India only to find that her mentor had died and 'Ajanta', the theatre where she learnt dancing, was about to be demolished and a shopping mall constructed in its place.

She decides to save the theatre by staging a romantic musical with the help of locals who can neither sing nor dance.

Dixit successfully stages the musical with help from some of the quirky characters of the town and saves 'Ajanta' from demolition before returning to the U.S.

"Watching her dance is fulfilling," business professional Shweta Sharma said. "She is magical." "We want to see her in many more films," another fan, Ashish Chowdhry, said and added, "I hope 'Aaja Nachle' is not her last film."

Prithwish Ganguly, Reuters India