Ash taught by Shobana

National Award winning actress and accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer Shobana has been called by director Mani Rathnam to teach dancing skills to Aishwarya Rai (Ash) for his forthcoming big budget bilingual film tentatively titled Ravan/ Asokavanam. The veteran actress has also been asked to do choreography for Ravan.

Ravan, being made in Tamil and Hindi, will be dubbed in Telugu and released simultaneously with the Tamil and Hindi versions. Mani Ratnam's wife and noted yesteryear heroine Suhasini is handling the Telugu script.

Meanwhile, the Kollywood grapevine has been abuzz after cameraman Manikandan quit Ravan, leaving a large portion of the film unfinished. The cameraman left because he had already completed his scheduled dates for this film and had allotted dates for an SRK film.

Now, Santosh Sivan has joined the unit as cinematographer and Mani may re-shoot large chunks of Ravan. Santosh and Mani have terrific work relationship owing to long innings that they have played by doing four films together, of which two fetched the cameraman National Awards for cinematography.

Ravana shall co-star hubby Abhishek Bachchan opposite Ashwairya Rai.
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