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Vice City Competition Review

LiL JaTT

Active Member
Messages
29
Lol as someone who was there:

-the venue ended up being a high school gym looking place that was part of some local park

-apparently teams weren't noted of the venue change until 2 days prior

-couldnt make it to the mixer but I heard that even though it was on a nice beach, it was delayed so late that it was too dark to see anything

-apparently the mixer was just people eating pizza and the organizers played SPDs bruin mix on loop

-the after party, from the outside, was at some sketch looking warehouse place. The actual party was eh

-tech time was delayed like 3 hours or something

-placings were announced sometime near midnight

-comp wasn't actually anywhere near miami

I was surprised to see how chill everyone seemed at the comp though, really makes me wish there was a well run comp in florida
 

yomamajama

Active Member
Messages
230
Lol as someone who was there:

-the venue ended up being a high school gym looking place that was part of some local park

-apparently teams weren't noted of the venue change until 2 days prior

-couldnt make it to the mixer but I heard that even though it was on a nice beach, it was delayed so late that it was too dark to see anything

-apparently the mixer was just people eating pizza and the organizers played SPDs bruin mix on loop

-the after party, from the outside, was at some sketch looking warehouse place. The actual party was eh

-tech time was delayed like 3 hours or something
So basically another well-run competition.
 

Aspreet Saini

Member
Messages
39
Yo I heard some craaaazy shenanigans happened. @teams that went to the comp, please call out the nonsense.
First of all thanks for making this thread,

I want to start off by saying I'm still fairly new to the bhangra circuit and Vice was my second comp that I have competed in with Rangeelay Jawan. I can summarize the whole competition with one word, "chaos." The night before some of my teammates and I left for the competition, we found out the venue had changed to a rec center gym. Some teams were flying at the time the venue changed and they did not find out until they landed. This was the third overall venue change. At first we were all mad, but then we got over it and were content with just being able to perform. There were supposed to be shuttles or someone picking us up from the airport but they stopped the shuttle service and we had to pay for a $135 ride to the hotel which was about 45 minutes away from the airport. I was not able to attend the mixer due to this but I heard it was trash.

So I arrived at the hotel seeing team practicing in the parking lot and this was due to the board (which was literally two people) not providing places to practice. This led to various complaints with people staying at the hotel and forcing us to go practice at a different location. I also found out that there wasn't going to be any tech time, but luckily the teams came together and literally forced the board to give us tech time. Our liaison was cool, but he was helping out two teams at the same time, and for a 17 year old, that is a lot to ask, so most of the time we were getting things ourselves. We were getting ready in a big room shared with 8 or 9 teams with only a small bathroom for guys and another bathroom for girls. For being the only all guys team it was extremely hard to tie our paggs with the short amount of time we were given. During the performance our lighting cues didn't work and it was very hard to see with all the lighting being directly I our eyes. Some teams said their dancers almost passed out with the strobe light flashing in their eyes. Afterparty was trash. We almost decided to skip it and find a local club to go instead. "The board" wanted us to pay $5 for every drink plus the $10 every person attending the comp had to pay for going to the after party. Shuttle service was trash to and from the hotel to the afterparty. Most teams were using uber. There were lots of problems with teams getting kicked out of the hotel and police being called multiple times. Overall the competition had so much potential and for it being in Miami it could have been way more organized. Instead it was a stressful and chaotic experience. This is just a basic summary of what happened, but a lot more did happen and hopefully others can elaborate as well.
 

jasmin21

New Member
Messages
3
Hanji. Hello. Hands down the worst & most unorganized comp I have been to thus far. The comp was not in Miami, but actually in Boca Raton ( 1 hour north of Miami ). Transportation was not provided for most part of the weekend. To compensate for the lack of transportation services, they did offer to reimburse all of my team’s uber’s... but we are still waiting to hear back on that.

Mixer was absolute trash. It started so late that it was already super dark outside. Since it was held on the beach, we were all stuck under one tiny cabana with limited seating and space. We only played one game which was like a musical chairs/dance off game but it was hard to see as well. show order was basically determined by picking a numbered paper slip from one hat and a team name from the other. After mixer we had to find places to practice, on our own & transportation to get there.

Next day, “day of show”, tech time was suppose to start at 10 AM, but kept getting pushed back. We ended up staying at the hotel until 3 PM, when they finally drove us to a high school gymnasium, which we were told was our ‘auditorium’? Audiance members were seated in the bleachers as teams performed on the ‘stage’, which was a basketball court set up with a black backdrop and many lighting sources to attempt to recreate a proper auditorium stage.
Regardless, all the teams did amazing and still performed as best as they could with the limited number of sound and light preferences available. Just as everyone else, we were just glad the competition didn’t get cancelled altogether and that we were able to compete. Thanks to the energy and vibe of the other teams, we had an amazing time experiencing everything, altogether.

My team was threatened to get kicked out of the hotel and had the cops called on us. Hotel was definitely not prepared to host multiple teams.

They also only had about 5 liasons for all the 14 teams & the 2 board members. My team’s liasion was nowhere to be found most of the time, so we had to find out all of comp info on our own, which was honesty such a struggle because: we could never locate provided food, figure out the competition status or timing, locate where our team was told to meet up, how we would get there, and how much time we had remaining.

This competition can literally be named the Fyre Bhangra Competition. 99% of our time that weekend was spent being confused because we had no guidance or support in this new city. There was no proper performance venue. There was no comp gear, so im confused as to what our roster fees were used for. The after party was in a strange venue, and once again, my team wasn't provided transportation.
But a huge shoutout to all the amazing teams who attended the competition & made the best of the weekend.
 

sdadoo15

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Messages
296
Will say, all the teams had an unbelievably good attitude about it all the entire weekend. Shit went south in so many ways, but teams, and especially the captains, made sure their teams went into the competition with their heads on straight and still looking to put on the best show they could! So mad mad respect to all the teams that competed - made an unbearable weekend a little more manageable!
 

Singhdp0512

New Member
Messages
6
One of the worst comps ever. My team had such a horrible experience and everyone regrets going. I was told that a lot of people are waiting to talk about the comp because teams are still trying to get reimbursed for stuff they were forced to pay that the committee was suppose to cover? But a few highlights ( this is a combination of stuff teams mentioned) - there were no shuttles so teams had to get ubers (cost $100+ per car) to get around since the comp was no where near Miami, we heard that the "committee"(aka a guy and his wife who have no clue what bhangra is) were trying to convince teams to let them use their personal licenses and information to book shuttles for all the teams because they didn't book it in advance- every team said no because no one wanted the liability, mixer was trash- started at 9PM instead of 5PM, it was outdoors and dark, 1 game and then everyone left, the stage size changed 3 times- from 48 by 38 to 30 by 40 to 40 by 30 all within the week so 4-5 teams were up until 3-4 am the night before a comp in the parking lot re adjusting their formations to try and fit on the stage and the organizers were unsure if that meant prop drop off area was included or not, the comp took place at a community gym! Teams literally flew out and spent hundreds of dollars to perform at a gym- the teams handled it well, but it was completely unfair. Teams were not informed of this until they were on the flights- my team would have cancelled our flight if we knew earlier. All in all, it was an unbearable weekend, extremely frustrating and one of the most unprofessional experiences any of us had been through

PS. I guess this guy is hosting another comp in NY in a few months and it seems like its going to be a similar mess. We already informed some teams to not go to this comp because it will not be a good experience. There is currently a lawsuit going on against the teams from the hotel for stuff that the teams didn't even know happened and no one communicated to us.
 
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Lally

Active Member
Messages
332
who hosted this competition ? drop names. then lets look into their personal competitive bhangra experience. I'm gonna assume that these ppl aren't bhangra ppl?
 

Mans

Active Member
BTF Mixing Mod
Messages
294
17091
Looking at the Vice City Bhangra website it was put on by High- Fi Marketing who previously organized Bhangra on the Rock and Sunset Bhangra. Seems to me is that whoever Rahul Prakash is he organized a Miss India pageant and then decided they were perfectly capable of trying to host comps around the country
 
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