Shobana to teach Ash!

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

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. Sources say that 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 rapport and understanding, having worked in four films together, of which two fetched the cameraman National Awards for cinematography.