This is going to be a tough call for Kangna Ranaut. In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Dedh Ishqiya, the sequel to 2010’s hit black comedy Ishqiya starring Vidya Balan with Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi, she has to match steps with dhak-dhak girl Madhuri Dixit.

In the sequel, Madhuri replaces Vidya and plays a character called Nawabi Begum whose role requires a lot of dancing. Kangna’s chacarter is that of the Begum’s pyari saheli and, naturally, she would have to join in the dancing. Director Abhishek Choubey has already told Kangna to brush up her steps.

Dedh Ishqiya takes the uncle-nephew pair of Naseeruddin and Arshad to Lucknow and into a highly cultured Muslim family where Madhuri and Kangna are romanced by the duo respectively. Abhishek’s idea was to place the Naseer and Arshad characters in a completely different milieu. “Repetition is death for me. I was against doing a sequel in the first place, because no matter how one looks at it, a sequel is an extension of the first film.

But when I finally decided on doing Dedh Ishqiya I decided to put the characters in a totally different ambience,” said the director, who intends to revive the old world Nawabi charm of ornate architecture, the tehzeeb and the adaas of Muslim socials like Mere Mehboob, Mere Huzoor, Chaudhvin Ka Chand and Nikaah. Abhishek’s genre would be contemporized. But the essence, the flavor of the period, its grace and most important the decadence of that nawabi culture would remain. Madhuri, a classical dancer, would be seen doing a lot of singing and dancing. Music was very important to Ishqiya and so it will remain in Dedh Ishqiya, though this time the songs and music would be very different.