VIJAY Anand's Guide has been selected for screening in the classics section at the Cannes Film Festival this year!

We take a closer look at the dancing tradition in Hindi films of the Sixties as against to today's gyratic movements that go in the name of dance.

Amidst the brouhaha over the performance of cheerleaders at IPL, and set against the backdrop of item numbers performed in teeny-weeny costumes by Raakhee Sawant, Mallika Sherawat, Malaika Arora Khan and the rest, the news that Vijay Anand's Guide (1965) has been selected for screening in the classics section at the Cannes Film Festival this year is like a breath of fresh air and a tribute to the school of Indian traditional dance forms.

Guide is not just the story of a tourist guide who evolves into a saintly figure by force of circumstance but it also shows how a woman can use dance as her voice of rebellion, self-expression, and of gay abandon and freedom.

A simple tourist guide (Dev Anand) in a small town in Rajasthan, Raju happens to meet Rosie (Waheeda Rehman), a beautiful young woman who is a talented dancer, trapped in an unhappy marriage to a noted archeologist, who uses every excuse to humiliate and insult her for her devdasi background.

In the photograph: Mallika Sherawat at the Premier of The Myth

Photograph: Getty Images