Bhangra Judging system.Should it be changed?

[Saran]

Ok so as we all know that BHANGRA is always being judged by the seniors,professionals,advanced,experienced bhangra dancers of all time but has anyone thought of the thing that should there be any reformation or change in this judging stuff?
First of all think that the BHANGRA TEAMS perform for whom? It is WE , OURSELVES, the bhangra family, for whom the teams do a lot of practice to showcase the culture and get ourselves enjoyed.So it should be in our hands to decide which team should be at which place nor in the hands of few bench of judges.
A voting system should be introduced to decide which team should be placed first and for that Harjot hundal sir or few others should post the video of all performances first and after few days of posting all the videos of a respective competition and having proper views there should be a proper website in which the bhangra family will caste their votes.This will increase the bhangra circuit also and it will also be a major step towards bhangra revolution.I hope u all liked my idea.
Thank you
SARAN( BHANGRA LEARNER )

 

[Manjot]

No. I am not waiting a week to see if we won or not lol. It defeats the purpose of having to go out of town for a competition to find out after a week as to how you did.

Voting online can be biased and not everyone will vote.

Harjot releases videos according to his own preference so we'll be waiting for him to release videos or be constantly asking him to. If you manage to suck up to him hard enough, you might get your video.

We just need judges that will judge every team without bias and judging according to the rubric. I hate how some judges give the 1st team 6 points max because they need a "base". That doesn't work anymore especially since every team is performing against the rubric to accumulate the most points.

Finding a judge not affiliated with any team is hard and almost impossible.

Maybe we can have the judges post their own reviews of every team/scorecards on BTF after the competition is finished. However, many judges in my opinion don't remember much of the routines after watching 8+ teams dance for 8 minutes long. It is all a blur. So, finding a system that'll work is going to be pretty hard. Good luck.

 

[hardeep_singh]

Harjot releases videos according to his own preference so we'll be waiting for him to release videos or be constantly asking him to. If you manage to suck up to him hard enough, you might get your video.

sidhi gal asi muh te akh de

 

[yomamajama]

sidhi gal asi muh te akh de

Speak English fuck boy.

 

[Sartaj_Singh]

I know this is the 100th time someones complained about judging, but I think that since so many people have made actual complaints about the judging system (not just saying "judges were wrong"), there has to be something that could make the process better. Here's some ideas I've been thinking about:

Stop having old uncles judge comps. I've definitely seen judges that are clearly not familiar with the modern competitive bhangra circuit, so having them judge modern music teams makes no sense. They provide no useful advice/critiques to teams, do not recognize the complexity of choreo or formations teams have, and they make heavily biased decisions based on outdated ideas about bhangra (moves should be done certain way, English/non-Punjabi songs shouldn't be in set etc). If a judge has not danced/participated with an actual bhangra team within the last 5-7 years, I don't think they should be a judge for modern comps, simply because they wouldn't know how the current circuit works. Being captain of a team that existed 10+ years ago that no one has ever heard of should not qualify someone to be a judge imo. The best solution to this issue is for more current/recently retired dancers to reach out and become judges themselves. Any dancer who has participated in captaining/designing a set/coaching in the last few years would be more qualified to judge bhangra than someone who danced in India 20 years ago.

Make rubrics more explicit. Rubrics right now don't do a great job of describing how points should be awarded, and a 0-10 scale for rubric criteria can be interpreted differently by each judge. So I think the points should be given when a team reaches certain explicit levels of form/creativity/etc, rather than letting the judge pick arbitrarily. Each point/range of points per section of the rubric would have a breakdown so that the scale is easily understood by all the judges.

Ex: For the "creativity in choreo" section of a rubric,
1-2 = team did basic moves throughout set, no/little variation in choreo, simple to execute
3-4 = team had few creative moments in choreo, added some impact to performance
5-6 = team had even mix of simple and creative choreo throughout set, added impact to performance
7-8 = choreo was unique and creative, few basic moments were seen between segments
9-10 = set was filled with creative choreo when appropriate and the creativity added large amount of impact

A scale like this would give judges a clearer way of picking what score to give teams, and it would give teams a better idea of how they should structure and build their set before the competition. These descriptions/scales would differ per comp, but if comps spelled out how exactly points would be awarded, expectations would be much more transparent to judges and teams. If the judges themselves put together these breakdowns before the comp, this process would be even better, considering most comps are not run by bhangra experts.

Lmk what you think, are these changes realistic or nah? Has anyone mentioned this stuff before? Tbh I didn't dig through every "judges suck" post. I don't want this to just be another post complaining about judging, I want changes to happen.

 

[jasraj93]

Every judge is different and has a different perspective on how bhangra is suppose to be done based on where they learned in Punjab (majha,malwa & doaba), this causes a lot of controversy in meetings (talking mostly about live bhangra). I don't agree we should let crowds or people decide who should win because that turns into a popularity contest, we won't get feedback from the "crowd judges" & a lot of people sitting in the crowd don't have a lot of knowledge about bhangra. The main issue I have encountered is judges being on different sides or saying things that aren't true and never happened during the performance such as "your black jodi did this off" but in fact there was no black jodi present on stage (this is an example). I think organizers need to start recording the meeting that happens after the teams are done performing and post it so teams know exactly what deliberation happened in the meeting and what was discussed.

 

[UmerQureshi96]

I think organizers need to start recording the meeting that happens after the teams are done performing and post it so teams know exactly what deliberation happened in the meeting and what was discussed.

Honestly, and I understand how this would probably never happen. But I’d want judges to have a brief 10 min discussion with every team in the room and just overall talk about why they placed the way they placed and then have individual meetings with each team. Or honestly, just have a 30ish minute meeting with one person per team and the judges just tell everyone at the same time. No behind the scenes ‘oh you were great I had you 4th’ but say that to every team that got 4-8 place. That way there’s at least some transparency. Obviously I understand there are a lotta logistical hurdles and you’d need some confident judges that aren’t scared of taking a little heat. But I do think the standard judges format can be shaken up a bit. I’d love to see some smaller comps take advantage of their status and experiment with different styles to hopefully change the circuit overall

 

[sdadoo15]

Honestly, and I understand how this would probably never happen. But I’d want judges to have a brief 10 min discussion with every team in the room and just overall talk about why they placed the way they placed and then have individual meetings with each team.

this would be sick and honestly don't think it would logistically be an issue. if there is a 5-10 minute meeting where only judges are allowed to talk, and they just briefly recap everything that was said during deliberation (and maybe provide scoresheets), this gives teams so much material to think about and prepare questions for judges before their actual meeting. plus, this would also eliminate wasting time discussing scores during the meeting, and the meeting itself can exclusively focus on feedback for the teams.

more often than not, it becomes tough to ask questions in a judges meeting if maybe you haven't seen all the performances or didn't see the teams that placed above you. so this could provide some sort of understanding to teams as to where they fell relative to other teams, which can be asked about during the meeting.

 

[Sartaj_Singh]

@UmerQureshi96 youre judging boston this year right? Maybe pitch some of these ideas and try them out? These ideas have to start somewhere.