The newly released romantic drama Chand Mera Dil, starring Ananya Panday and Lakshya Lalwani, has found itself at the center of a raging social media storm. While the film has garnered praise for its emotionally heavy storyline—following a young college couple dealing with an unexpected pregnancy—a specific dance sequence has triggered intense backlash online.
In the film, Ananya’s character, Chandni, performs a fusion dance during a college orientation sequence. However, a short, out-of-context clip of the performance has gone viral, turning the actress into the latest target for brutal trolling and criticism from classical dance purists.
The Internet Reacts: “Blood Coming From My Eyes”
Social media users and classical art exponents did not hold back their disappointment, criticizing the performance for lack of technique and disrespect toward the traditional art form.
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Artistes Weigh In: Celebrated choreographer Anita R. Ratnam expressed her dismay on X (formerly Twitter), stating the clip felt like “Bharatanatyam being held hostage by a catastrophic misunderstanding of the form.” She added that the performance treated the ancient dance “like a wedding sangeet filmed during a mild earthquake,” lamenting the confidence with which it bypassed centuries of dedication and traditional adavus (steps).
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Cultural insensitivity: Carnatic musician Krithika Sivaswamy highlighted the film industry’s perceived insensitivity toward classical arts, noting that the lack of legal mechanisms to protect these art forms allows anyone to “do any crap with it.”
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Viewer Backlash: Audiences joined the critique with harsh memes and commentary. One user joked that Bharatanatyam “was founded in 200 BCE and ended with Ananya Panday in 2026,” while another dramatically claimed, “Karan Johar has blood on his hands, and it’s coming from my eyes watching her dance.” Dr. Shama Mohamed, a trained dancer, urged Bollywood to stop “manufacturing” and insulting an art form that requires years of dedicated study.
Context Deficit: A Victim of Viral Snippets
Despite the heavy online trolling, the backlash seems to stem from a misunderstanding of the film’s actual context. The viral video circulating on social media is only a few seconds long and pulled from the very end of the sequence.
In the movie, the performance is explicitly framed as a modern fusion dance set to Priya Madhuri’s track mixed with contemporary beats, rather than a traditional, strict Bharatanatyam recital. Stripped of this context, the snippet has unfortunately subjected the actress to a wave of unfair and incessant trolling.
