Madhuri Dixit: Best dancers don't always win the show; they have to touch audience's heart as well

Mumbai: Actress Madhuri Dixit, who is judging dance reality show 'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa', feels best dancer may not win the show as contestant who strikes a chord with audience eventually emerges victorious.

"As a person I learnt lots of things (from the show) when we see the journey of so many contestants on the show, how they began and how they evolved. It is always not the best of dancers who win the show, but the contestants have to touch the hearts of the audience," Madhuri told PTI in an interview.\

The actress is judging the show for the fourth time in a row. The other judges are filmmaker Karan Johar and choreographer-director Remo D'Souza.

"Acting and dance both are my passion. In film industry acting and dancing both are important. I am very happy doing 'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa', it is very close to my heart. I love to see people dancing and judging them," she said.

"There are lots of new things this time like introduction of new dance forms, newer concepts. This time we are going to be stricter... Getting eight, nine and ten marks will be difficult. They (contestants) will have to work really hard to

get good marks," Madhuri said.

"We also have lot of fun stuff like lie-o-meter, when one of the judges is too diplomatic we will be using that. We will be changing choreographers midway and make it more challenging for the contestants," she said. The current seventh season of the dance show will see Ukrainian dance expert Maksim Chmerkovskiy on the jury.

"Maksim will be there for few weeks. He is well trained in Latino and that kind of dancing, so we will have an expert guy talking about the dance forms and contestants," Madhuri said.

Another change this season will be Madhuri's look. She won't be seen in her embellished saris. She would rather don a western look.

"Three seasons we have done with Indian dresses, then it starts looking repetitive so we have tried to break it up by going Indo-western this time," she said.

This season contestants include TV actors, comedian and sportsman. One of the contestants is former Indian pacer Sreesanth, who is banned for life by the BCCI for his alleged involvement in spot-fixing in IPL.

"I think we just want to see him (Sreesanth) as a dancer, see his growth. What he has done before and all that is none of our business. He is one of the contestants and we have to judge him on the basis of dance and nothing else,"

Madhuri said.

The show went on air from yesterday on Colors channel.