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Competitive Bollywood fusion dance has thrived on American college campuses for decades, but it has rarely been the subject of a scripted feature film.
Lena Khan’s “Best of the Best,” premiering Friday on Netflix, follows
childhood best friends Maya and Anjali as they join UCLA’s competitive dance team, only to discover that the road to the U.S. Championship is far more raucous and cutthroat than they imagined.
Written by Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam, who each competed in similar circuits growing up, the script drew Khan in even though she was not initially sure she would take on the project. Early on, she recalls mentioning it to a childhood friend, who was dismissive. “Bollywood competitions, really?” the friend said, and made it seem like it was not that cool, according to Khan, who says the reaction reflects something broader. “I think South Asians, especially in the diaspora, are so used to not even having our own self-respect.”
That realization shaped how she approached the film’s tone. “We have so much respect for the skill sets of other cultures. We’re looking at kung fu, we’re looking at these different arts. But when we look at our own, we’re used to seeing ourselves as Apu or as the funny nerdy side characters,” Khan says. She wanted the movie to carry a different posture entirely. “We can be proud of things that we do as South Asians,” she says.
Minhaj and Venkataramanujam drew on their own backgrounds for the script. Minhaj’s wife danced competitively, and Venkataramanujam performed with an a cappella team called Chai Town, giving him firsthand knowledge of how consuming the competition circuit can become. Khan spent time with UCLA’s own dance team and traveled to North Carolina to observe competitions in preparation.
Khan’s earlier work directing episodes of Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever” fed into how she thinks about representation. “When you have more than one of a minority character, then there’s suddenly become real characters,” she says, describing the shift that happens once side characters are allowed the same depth as anyone else. “You get to focus on the humanity between them, the things that become relatable to everybody else.”
Casting required actors who could carry both comedy and depth, and several, including Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, had never danced competitively before landing their roles. Khan recalls pushing Ramakrishnan toward a specific physical transformation during casting. “I need you to give me some Channing Tatum energy. And then I was like, no, actually, I need you to do a Christian Bale on me. I need a complete athletic transformation,” she says. Ramakrishnan went on to complete months of intensive dance training ahead of the shoot.
Khan built the dance sequences with choreographers Phillip Chbeeb and Makenzie Dustman, with Joya Kazi credited as co-choreographer. Each number was approached with a single guiding question, she says: “What is the essence we are trying to bring out in this particular moment?” Where a typical Bollywood dance sequence gets five days to shoot, the production often had just one. The choreography also draws on multiple regional styles, including Kuthu, Bharatanatyam and Pakistani-influenced dance, reflecting the mix of identities on the fictional team.
Khan, whose credits include the independent feature “The Tiger Hunter,” says the industry’s relationship to South Asian stories has shifted since that film came out in 2016, even as some structural limits remain. “We still don’t have that many romances or romantic comedies with South Asians,” she says, pointing out that South Asian men are often not given the chance to play the lead. The film flips that dynamic elsewhere in its own casting, she notes: “The nerdy minority character is actually a white guy. Like we have a token white guy.” She also credits a wave of South Asian musicians and actors, including Joy Crookes, whose song she fought to include in the soundtrack, with making the film possible. “And now we’re like, well, we’ve really made it when we make a movie that’s just good,” she says.
That philosophy extended to how much cultural context the film explains for a global Netflix audience. Khan says she resisted pressure to over-explain South Asian references, trusting shows like “Never Have I Ever” to have already proven audiences do not need everything spelled out. “At some point this country and the world is just full of people in different cultures,” she says.
Working with Minhaj and Venkataramanujam, both first-time feature writers, meant frequent creative disagreements, Khan says, but never without purpose. “There would be such a thoughtful reason that we were always fighting over why we’re doing a certain thing, but it was never for a vapid reason,” she says. “And they’re also just the most gracious people.”
Looking ahead, Khan says she is drawn to projects centered on overlooked people or subjects, alongside a personal passion project already underway. “I’m always on the hunt for that,” she says, describing a search for stories she wishes already existed and a way to make them for a wide audience.
“Best of the Best” also stars Lilly Singh, Nihar Duvvuri, Nico Greetham, Amryn Khurana, Tanishq Joshi, Saara Chaudry and Sasha Bhasin. It is streaming now on Netflix.
