QUICK STYLE: WE DID NOT EXPECT SUCH REACTIONS FROM INDIA
The Norwegian dance troupe, whose desi dance videos have gone viral, talks to us about growing up with Bollywood music and films
Dancing to Bollywood chartbusters such as Chura Ke Dil Mera (Main Khiladi Tu Anari, 1994), Tumse Milke Dil Ka (Main Hoon Na, 2004) and Kala Chashma (Baar Baar Dekho, 2018) in what seemed like a wedding party, Quick Style, the Norwegian dance group has gone viral and how! While the group has been popular in the West, the dancers certainly weren’t prepared for the reactions they received from India.
As we exclusively connect on a call with PakistaniNorwegian brothers Suleman and Bilal Malik (two of the founding members of the group, with Nasir Sirikhan
being the third), they start off by gushing, “Oh my God! We didn’t expect this at all! We get thousands of messages every day on Instagram. Even aunties and kids are recognising us.”
Don’t mistake them to be just any other dance group,
though. Dancing for 16 years now, Quick Style has even helped choreograph songs such as Boy With Luv and Blood Sweat and Tears for the K-pop band BTS. Besides the public adulation, celebs, too, praised their viral dance videos. Actors Akshay Kumar and Shilpa Shetty Kundra, who originally starred in Chura Ke..., took notice as well. Bilal exclaims, “We watched them as kids, and Akshay wrote, ‘Dil chura liya’! It was really fun.”
Talking about how they came to dance on desi hits, Bilal shares, “Growing up, we had Bollywood music playing in our house, besides Arabic and Pakistani songs. We were familiar with that, and my sister would also send us those songs. That’s how we started dancing to Hindi tracks. The idea of this specific show (clips of which are going viral) was our partner, Naseer’s.”
What started off as a threemember group is now a 200member dance troupe. Ask them whether all this attention from India is compelling them to visit the country, and Bilal says, “We will do it! It’s nice if we are approached by award shows or something big.”