Spartan Bhangra @ BBC 2018

Hi Everyone!

We had such a fun time in Boston this past weekend and we are so honored to have been able to share the stage with teams that we've looked up to for so long. Every team brought an amazing set and we're so excited to keep learning from you all. Huge congratulations to NJFL, ABC, and BU Bhangra for their placings!

We would like to thank the BBC 2018 Competition Board for putting on yet another great competition and our liaisons for ensuring that we were taken care of at all times. Thank you to MOB Chicago and the coaches on NJFL for helping us with our paghan right before the show!

Thank you so much to @srikarran (DJ kRRn MiXeS) for our mix and @TegHans for the intro and saap segments in our mix! Thank you for being so communicative and reliable throughout this whole process! Check out the mix:
So many more people we are so grateful for but a special thank you to our alumni @Raghavtrip, @Akash_M, Suji Baskar, @rishabh.m, @hansaagops and @Shastri for all the helpful critiques leading up to the competition. We miss you guys so much, please come visit more often!!!

As for my co-captains (@alisa.quemado, @srikarran, @diyaramanathan), thank you for all your hard work these past few months and for our co-choreographers (Grace Ahuja, @neeva_patel) thank you for all your time and efforts thus far!

We would love feedback from the BTF community on our performance at BBC 2018. As a collegiate team, we are constantly looking for critiques so any help would be much appreciated!!!!


Red: Medha Narwankar
Ferozi: Alisa Quemado and Gustavo Roversi
Purple: Sanjana Madishetty and Amrish Selvam
Green: Devina Patel and Gundeep Singh
Yellow: Sharmila Iyer and Amogh Iyer
Orange: Nimra Hassan and Preetham Yarlagadda
Dholi: Srikarran Sowrirajan

Thank you @hardeep_singh and @suhail_rawal for the videos!

Something I would suggest is to make formations more dynamic and complementary to your choreo. In shikke for instance, you guys start out with a lot of energy but then stay pretty stagnant in formation, slowing the momentum. Without a proper formations lead up or moving parts your drops can fall flat.

The other thing is to standardize the posture of your dancers; there are some flatfooted dancers, jodis hunching/leaning differently (chaal, phumanya), not getting as low as others. Everyone should be executing the segments confidently and as taught.

There are a lot of fun ideas in here, you guys just need to showcase them a little more confidently on stage. Great job and I'm excited to see what comes next!

So first things first, i really only thought about fcb and the plane that we used a while back when i saw your intro hahaha, probably just a personal thing but thats all i thought about. Also in the intro sways some of your dancers were doing faslaan and some were just on their feet. I think with intros you gotta find something about your team and really push your identity out there if that makes sense.

Next thing, purple dude chaadra was tied differently from the rest of the teams, idk what happened but one thing thats huge is presentation. everyone else's is nice and low past the knees but it seemed not like that for the guy in purple.

Saap jandhu sangha drop didn't hit imo, guy in orange did not finish the last step wide like the rest of the team. Felt like the drop was kind of forced for saaps, just didn't seem to flow into each other really well if that makes sense. Maybe try to make it flow a little bit better, just because for me it felt like you used jandu sangha just to use it rather than it having that purpose there.

The drop off was pretty good though for saaps, when the guys came around not having saaps was intriguing.

jugni form in the second song was sloppy throughout. shout out to red guy for getting low, but everyone's gotta get that kind of knees at a 90 wide aspect if you guys are gonna hit chaal, because it looks a lot better that way. 2:03 is a good place that shows how yall should do chaal and jugni throughout. Felt like the drop into lehriyaan was again forced, cause you just stood up and then sat down into it. I think you can find a way to spin down into it and then bring it back up.

There were a lot of cool ideas in the phummaniya segment, but i think you have to choose some of those cool aspects and limit it. The beginning of the segment was kind of weird because you did phummaniya and then some how ended up doing 2 beats of tin taara and then moving agian. I liked the mechanism you did with the second round of phummaniya I thought that was dope. But y'all have to really execute it. Dancers knees have to be coming up in phummaniya and yall have to really grind through and finish every step.

Khunde pickup would have been dope if your dancers sold it. Everyone looked super nervous throughout it and it actually made me feel a little bit nervous. If everyone had thugged right there, would have made that moment hit a lot harder.

I think ferozi jodi and red jodi did a super good job of smiling and looking into it the whole time. really found myself watching them most of the time as opposed to the rest of your dancers simply because they completed all of the moves and really pushed themselves to have fun.

I think you may have done a little too many shoulder pops, felt like i saw one in every segment. I think choosing one you think would the hardest is a good and maybe one more place where it would be kinky would help solve that issue.

Your ending also reminded me of RVD with what they did at mela pulling back step. There was a lot of points where I felt like i saw other team influences in your set. You guys have a really unique style and should focus on using choreo to compliment your dancers and find your identity. For example, furteelay sets are always hella swaggy with one pretty big moment and your just like holy jawns. FAUJ brings creativity that most people can't even see. You guys have to find a way to find your identity and capitalize on that!

Hi Spartan!

I have just a few points of feedback for you guys. I’ll just speak to what hasn’t been spoken to yet.

* Energy level : There were times dancer displayed uncontrolled energy and became distractions rather than enhancements to the set. It’s easy to get over hype on stage but remember to never sacrifice form.
* Khunde prop distribution: I felt this didn’t have the pay off to be the sole focus of the stage. Someone mentioned it wasn’t being sold enough, but I think more could be done there. Maybe have dancers rotating in an axis and also passing props? Play with the idea some more for bigger pay off of counts.
* Dhammal: I really enjoyed this segment, it looked a little messy though. Spend some extra time fine cleaning it.
* 5:55-6:15ish: formations here were a bit messy and also very tight. I’d recommend going back to the drawing board with these formations to find a way to better present your dancers.

You guys have a lot of talent on your team. Just need to fine tune presentation. Looking forward to your next performance!

You guys' dancing and talent gets better every year. With that, though, y'all can definitely step up the difficulty of your choreo. As an example, I don't think there was a single point in your sapp segment where you did double clicks for more than 4 beats. I definitely agree with the points above regarding formation cleanliness. I honestly think this has to do with your stage markers. Not only are they super colorful and distracting, but it seems like dancers are setting to markers instead of each other which may cause clumping...perhaps consider getting rid of them?

Get everyone dancing like ferozi jodi, especially from a nakhra standpoint. Had a blast watching those 2. There's definitely some cool ideas with dhamaal and your ending. Bring up the difficulty/intrigue of the rest of your set to the same level, standardize the dancing, and get those formations cleaned. Good luck!