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SPD Bhangra Arena 2019 First Place

Basim

♥ BTF ♥
Staff member
Messages
1,459
Misleading title - was that supposed to say "should be First Place?" Regardless, looks like one brutal performance. SPD always bringing the heat.

For those wondering, placings at this comp were as follows..

Music Placings:
  1. Folking Desi
  2. Nachde Rounki Gabroo
  3. Bhangra Brigade
Live Placings:
  1. Singh International Cultural Academy (SICA)
  2. Mohindra College Patiala
  3. Bhangra Loverz
Definitely looking forward to seeing the GTV videos from this competition.

~ Basim :)
 
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JimmyJatt463

Member
Messages
74
Set was definitely filled with energy and the guys had insane stamina!!
Was very enjoyable to watch. Band and Honey Sidhu were phenomenal to listen to.
It's a shame what happened at the comp but I firmly believe this set should have placed at the very least.
 

Basim

♥ BTF ♥
Staff member
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1,459
I feel like you don't get the point of it then.

There is no better time to do it than in on stage, in front of everyone. The only platform where all the teams, audience, judges, etc can be held accountable is on public display, on the spot. How many times have teams come to BTF or social media and something happened after that? There's a competition that happens every year where there is controversy (I'm not going to say which one), where teams come on BTF the day after the comp and throw a fit -- nothing happens, the comp still takes place every year.
I understand your point Karn. I just don't feel anything productive is going to happen by rushing the stage and cursing out judges. Many competitions have judges meetings with teams (or at least the captain) to explain how their scored the team according to the rubric, with time given for each captain to discuss things and get ideas for team improvement going forward. I don't know enough about Bhangra Arena, but I am assuming they don't have this type of setup.

If something happens with your team or you're disappointed with a competition (whether it be for judging, comp organization, comp logistics, lack of communication, prize distribution, etc), the best thing to do (imo) is to avoid such competition in the future -AND- let other teams know about it. I have only seen a handful of posts where a competition is advertised on BTF or other forms of social media and a team either praise their experience at a competition or let other teams know about the terrible experience they had.

Just taking Boston Bhangra as an example here - but let's say that I felt my team hit all the points based on a rubric and had a killer performance that was talked about for months by people all over social media, YET we didn't place. Also, an explanation wasn't given by judges or the competition didn't even provide my team a chance to review my scoresheet and discuss with the judges. You bet that as a captain, when Boston Bhangra advertises and tries to recruit teams for their competition the following year, I am going to link to a post about my teams experiences dealing with Boston Bhangra's lack of judging feedback and their competition lacking the ability to pick skillful judges who can score teams based on their rubric. After stating the facts, it's the choice of other teams whether they want to risk going through the same thing or not.

Bottom line is every competition has a reputation and it's up to the teams to provide their accounts to either help or hurt the competition's reputation. Post competition reviews are incredibly powerful and I thank each one of you who contributes toward sharing your experiences (whether as an audience member or a competitive dancer/team). A word of advise for newer teams, do your research before applying to competitions!

Anyway, this is actually a good discussion and this is just my opinion,

~ Basim :)
 
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Basim

♥ BTF ♥
Staff member
Messages
1,459
A slightly better video of this amazing performance that I came across:


Very, very talented dancers. The team should be extremely proud of the performance and all of the accomplishments they have had up until date. They are still one of the best live teams in North America.

~ Basim :)
 

yomamajama

Active Member
Messages
230
ugly.. ugly scenes. Can someone fill me in as to what happened?
I’m not sure how you miss it.. but SPD gave a performance, SPD thought they got first, SPD was wrong, SPD then got upset at the judges.

After thinking on it, this is no different than how any Bhangra competition would be run anywhere. This is why again we need Kabbaddi matches, way for people to blow off steam and still keep it folk.
 

hardeep_singh

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,464
ugly.. ugly scenes. Can someone fill me in as to what happened?
before placings were announced one specific judge got on the mic and targeted the SPD performance with criticism pertaining to retaining the traditionalism of bhangra. he started by making generic statements about the origins of bhangra and why it's so important culturally, before focusing on what he saw as flaws in SPD's set with respect to the creative liberties they took with their choreo.
the fault for the whole debacle fall solely on that judge and the bhangra arena committee that gave him the platform to spout off his "i know folk bhangra better than anyone and we need to protect folk bhangra" even before placings were announced.
what is unknown is if that specific judge overruled the rest of the panel of if the whole panel had reached a consensus about the set and that specific judge was selected as a spokes person to explain to the audience as to why the set was not in consideration for placings. i wouldn't be surprised if he pulled the typical uncle judge BS and overruled the rest of the judges. i saw a clip on social media of some of the judges dancing with pammi bai, and if i'm correct and this judge is the same dude as in that video, then i know for a fact that he can't dance for shit, which would make his whole "folk bhangra is sacred" screed even more ridiculous.
if the judges felt so strongly about the spd set, they should have announced placings then immediately met privately with spd to explain. bashing a performance that was not in any way offensive in front of the entire audience is stupid. any team would have done the same thing spd did, hell if spd had been like the old school teams from toronto/cali from like 10-15 yrs ago, fists would have been flying immediately.

other reasons why bhangra arena has no authority to define what is folk/traditional:
  1. if they were so concerned with folk bhangra they wouldn't run a mixed music and live competition
  2. this competition is in delhi, a place that has never been known for it's traditional punjabi culture, especially since punjabi is the second language for most punjabis living in delhi, especially the younger generation
  3. this wasn't a youth festival featuring top talent collegiate teams, all the live teams seem to be comprised of over the hill ex collegiate dancers
  4. the people behind bhangra arena teach bhangra classes, from what i've seen, folk/traditional bhangra is not taught in these classes, DCMPAA they are not
  5. bhangra arena itself seems to be modeled after competitions you see in US/canada, all about money and publicity while claiming that punjabi culture is their primary focus
 
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