Bollywood's Story: Sunil Moothedath - From A Background Dancer To Real-Estate Angent

Sunil Moothedath, a 40-year-old dancer, has spent 21 years on dancing in the background of Bollywood stars. Even his switch made him become a real estate agent in Kalyan, the dancer confessed that he still has a great passion for dancing and maintains working on film stages five to six days per month.

After a long time working in the entertainment industry, he decided to step out. The reason is that his career as a dancer has become harder and harder, his earning hasn’t had much improvement, or even being stagnant.

As he is the first son in the family, he proudly said:

He decided to work as a background dancer as dancing is his strong passion. However, to keep surviving, solely depending on the income from background dancing has never been enough.

The dancing career of Moothedath started in 1997, and he is a member of Ganesh Acharya, a choreographer group. Some of the movies that he featured in include Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Dabangg 2, Jodhaa Akbar, and many more.

The first problem of Moothedath was financial issues as the income from dancing could not help him in moving to the prime area in Andheri. According to Moothedath, living in Kalyan was a barrier that prevents him from being in the list of privileged dancers who are always called whenever film producers need.

Beside problems relating to finance, the appearance of ‘outside dancers’ - dancers from overseas or other states, leads to intense competition in the industry.

Moothedath honestly shared that the rate for dancers has increased from ₹700 or ₹800 to ₹3,500 per day. However, in contrary to wage, the process has also been accelerated; directors only take around 4 days to finish the shoot, much shorter compared to the length of required time in the past, about 11 days. Additionally, in 10 years, the number of needed background dancers has also decreased from 200 to only 50.

Moothedath believes that he is quite lucky as he is able to have a white-collar job while some of Moothedath's fellow dancers have been selling crockery on roadside or toy at markets.