Diego Luna is the primary particular person to let you know he's not a dancer.

The Andor star is understood extra for intense dramas and motion scenes than for tripping the sunshine improbable. However you'd by no means realize it primarily based on Kiss of the Spider Lady, through which Luna stars as political prisoner Valentin Arregui and pulls double responsibility as Armando, a fictional love curiosity within the eponymous film inside a film.

The latter, as conceived right here by writer-director Invoice Condon, is a cross between song-and-dance man Gene Kelly and basic Hollywood star Ricardo Montalban. However in his common life, Luna comes nowhere near that sort of fleet-footedness.

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"I want many tequilas to bounce," he admits, sheepishly grinning. "I’m not a dancer. It was a problem, however a enjoyable one to take. I flew to New York and I had a session with choreographer Sergio Trujillo, and that's the second the place we have been like, 'Okay, I believe there's an opportunity we are going to get there.'"

"He was very clear to me," Luna continues. "He mentioned, 'That is about bringing layers, and also you've received to be affected person."

At first, Luna got here up towards a nuanced distinction between profession actors and dancers — the need of a mirror in a single's work. "We don't work with mirrors," he says of actors. "Mirrors are not any good to us. There's actors that can’t even see themselves on the screens. As a result of it will get ruined, the method will get f—ed mainly. Dancers are the other. They’ve to take a look at themselves on a regular basis to grasp what's not excellent. It took me some time to be taught to see myself in that mirror with out judging myself in a manner that made me simply run away."

For Luna, there was one key issue that made every thing work for him — dancing with Jennifer Lopez. "It doesn't get higher than that, ?" he says with amusing. "She was an ideal chief as a result of she has a lot rigor. She's all the time making an attempt to get it higher and higher and higher. It was fascinating to see how onerous she works, after which how straightforward she makes it look."

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Certainly, Luna admits that studying his choreography and making an attempt to excellent it was a reasonably depressing expertise till he began working with Lopez. "I didn't begin having fun with the journey till she got here in," he says. "I used to be anxious and struggling. Instantly, when she got here in, Sergio mentioned to me, 'I do know you’re anxious, and you have to be, however no matter you don't get proper, she's going to make it look proper. It's going to look nice, as a result of she's bringing that different factor that you’re lacking.'"

Certainly, although Lopez is primarily identified for her hip-hop and up to date dance kinds, she says returning to those extra basic Broadway routines was like seeing an outdated good friend. "I began with this model after I was a little or no woman," she says. "I discovered jazz, I discovered ballet, I discovered Broadway. So, it was like coming again to one thing that I had all the time accomplished. It was a brush-up. It took time, however I used to be so excited. I had that vocabulary in my physique already. So, it was like dusting it off of the shelf and making it shiny and new once more."

Kiss of the Spider Lady is now taking part in.

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