Gaurav Chopraa lends 'desi' touch to American dancing show

Gaurav Chopraa is dancing his way into the hearts of his global fans through his stint in the Georgia edition of the American show "Dancing With The Stars". And the Indian actor says he went to the foreign shores with one aim -- "learn a bit from them and teach a lot about us".

The actor, who has showcased his dancing prowess on home turf through reality TV shows like "Nach Baliye" and "Zara Nachke Dikhaa", added that he tries to infuse 'desi' touch to each of his performances.

"When I came to Georgia, my basic point was that they are not aware about what's happening in films in India. And so I wanted to be the source of that every week. I do want to underline that I am not here for competition per se. I want to learn a bit from them and teach a lot about us," Gaurav said in a statement.

He added: "I was successfully able to do that in the last week by performing on an Indian song on an international dance theme. I have been putting in ingredients from our side, our aesthetics in my performances so far and everyone seemed to have liked it."

"I need everyone's blessings from India and I need everyone's wishes. I am a bit of a cultural ambassador here and I will make sure the exposure to India and the Indianness reflects in each of my performance week on week."

Gaurav, who made a name for himself in the world of small screen courtesy his shows like "Uttaran", shared that the journey on the international show so far has been "little exciting" and dream-like for him.

Gaurav is familiar with various Indian and international dance forms like Fox Trot, Waltz, Salsa among others, and he has been receiving top scores and is ranking second on the score chart till now.

The actor even introduced Indian tunes and rhythms with a Bollywood twist to the show. He danced on a track titled "Calcutta kiss" from "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!" in the second week.

He said: "The second week was a big challenge. There was a theme called quick step and am not really a dancer per se, so while I am quite familiar about some of the dance forms that are popular in India, I hadn't heard of quick step and it sounded scary."

"It sounded to be many fast steps and it turned out to be exactly that. It was a challenge to get them to say yes for an Indian song for quick step. It took me about two to three days to convince them. We went through many songs and then we found one and they were absolutely astonished to find that there is an Indian song that has a quick step beat."