Shreyas Manju and Samyuktha Hegde burn up the dance floor in Malli Malli from Raana

Choreographed by Imran Sardhariya, the song, composed by Chandan Shetty, has him on vocals along with Divya Ramachandra

A screen grab from the song Malli Malli

When you have two good dancers and put them together in a special song, you get nothing short of fireworks and that’s what choreographer Imran Sardhariya has done with the song Malli Malli from Raana. Shot at colourful sets at a studio in Bengaluru in January, the song brings lead actor Shreyas K Manju together with dancer-acrobat-actor Samyuktha Hegde. And together, they quite literally burn up the dance floor.

Malli Malli, incidentally, was a song that was supposed to be done by Ragini Dwivedi, but the actress had to excuse herself eventually, when the proposed dates for the shoot clashed with a previous commitment. It was then that Imran got Samyuktha on board.

Raana is Shreyas K Manju’s third film as an actor. The son of veteran producer K Manju, Shreyas, who debuted with Paddehuli has another film called Vishnu Priya for release. But it is his third, this commercial entertainer directed by R Nanda Kishore, with music by rapper-composer Chandan Shetty, that has him excited. Filming of Raana, in which Shreyas is paired with Reeshma Nanaiah and Rajani Bharadwaj, has been completed, we hear, and the team is busy with post-production.

In earlier interactions with us, Shreyas had said that even though the teaser may seem that the film is high on action, it is a complete package with the right amount of comedy, romance, and emotional drama too. Raana, he said, is a mix of mass and class. “Raana strikes middle ground in its narrative style. Yes, there are commercial elements, like songs, dance and action, but I do not have bombastic punchlines. The action in this film will be a highlight; we’ve used references from the Hindi film War and the English movie John Wick and built on it. In fact, the second half completely runs on action. The stunts take the narrative forward, rather than the story,” Shreyas had said.

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