Dancing with the stars

From making and breaking friendships to igniting new romances, Bollywood tours involve a lot more than song and dance

By the time you read this, I’ll be touching down in San Jose, California to attend the final show in a four-city world tour, starring Akshay Kumar and a troupe of Bollywood actors and musicians. The world tour first became a thing in the 1980s, when, at the peak of his popularity, Amitabh Bachchan would routinely take four-to-six weeks off from film shoots every other year and travel across the US, Canada, and the UK, to perform live shows for a primarily NRI audience. The most popular of these was the Jumma Chumma concert. Its London show in 1990 included Sridevi, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Neelam, Anupam Kher, and composers Kalyanji-Anandji alongside Bachchan. It was staged for a fullcapacity audience at the sprawling Wembley Stadium.

Typically, this kind of tour is headlined by one (at the most, two) male superstars, and padded by a clutch of popular women actors, a smattering of up-and-comers, the token funny guy, and one or two big-name singers or musicians. It was conceived as an opportunity to take Bollywood to some of its biggest fans: First- and second-generation immigrants, whose chief connection with their Indian roots has always been Hindi cinema. The idea was to offer a variety entertainment experience for dollar- and pound-paying fans to watch their favourite performers live.

Tickets to attend one of these shows have been known to go up to $500 (more than Rs 40,000) a pop, depending on the star wattage. But one could pay as little as $80 (Rs 1,600) for the cheap seats. The bulk of revenue is divided among the talent, with the superstar naturally taking the lion’s share. A-listers like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Akshay Kumar have been known to make anything north of Rs 2 crore per show, so that’s a cool Rs 10 crore for a fivecity tour, earned in foreign currency.

The world, however, has changed. On Instagram celebrities are all singing and dancing in their Reels anyway. In a postpandemic economy, there are a million more important things on which to spend one’s hard-earned dollars. That explains why there have been fewer tours lately, why shows are frequently cancelled on account of poor ticket sales, and why actors don’t make as much as they once used to from these shows.

There’s also a pressure on the stars to up the ante. Akshay Kumar, I’m told, will be making his entry riding onto the stage on an electric bike, or directly into the crowds from the roof of the arena, suspended from cables. In the past, he’s emerged from a blaze of live flames. The bar has been set high. Fans who attended the Unforgettable tour in 2008 still haven’t forgotten the electricity in the air when Amitabh, Abhishek, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan grooved to Kajra Re. Salman Khan’s signature Dabangg tour routinely adds and replaces leading ladies to keep the mix new and exciting in every show.

These tours have also become bonding exercises for actors who spend weeks together on the road sharing chartered airplanes, tour buses, hotels, breakfast buffets, rehearsal halls, and eventually a stage over a few weeks. Even though they were pitted against each other by the media, Aishwarya Rai and Rani Mukerji famously became buddies while on a US tour with Aamir Khan years ago. On another one of these tours, Salman Khan and John Abraham reportedly fell out, following an ego clash. Romances (and hook ups) are also known to have happened on tours.

The success of these shows are, understandably, related to the popularity of the films and the stars. You can be sure someone is plotting a multi-city summer tour with Shah Rukh Khan at the moment.