Psant
UNC Bhangra Elite Alum, Brandeis Bhangra
- Messages
- 434
First, a little background.
Rangoli is a competition held by Mercer University in Macon, GA, that showcases three styles of dance: bhangra, fusion, and raas with a single winner in each category. On most teams' lists, this is considered a minor event to warm up before attending actual competitions. Teams are enticed to come because of the $1000 prize for each category, year after year, in addition to a special South Asian Performer (last year was Jay Sean, this was was Lomaticc, Sunny Brown, and Baba Kahn).
If you are an organizer or part of this show planning whatsoever, please read this very carefully if you ever want any out-of-state teams to ever apply to your show ever again.
I will start off with my experience.
Rehearsals: They started at 6:30 AM. This is an inconvenience of course, but, as soon as my team arrived at the venue, we were informed that the rehearsal time was delayed by over an hour. This is unacceptable, as my team was second in the show order, leading to no possible way to have that sort of delay. In addition, this is probably one of the only competitions in which there are no liaisons whatsoever, leaving all the teams confused in Macon, GA - a city that isn't very welcoming or anything at all to be honest.
Actual Show: There were numerous technical blunders during the course of the show. There was a point where the tech staff played our intro video with no sound at all, then gave us lip whenever we asked them to play it again with sound. During the course of this, there was no effort made by the staff to inform the audience of what was happening. There literally was a blackout for 10 straight minutes with no emcee interaction. This happened to numerous teams. In addition, one raas teams' lighting didn't go on for a good 10 seconds into their routine. There were literally 50-75 people left to watch the winners as everyone was tired of being the auditorium for 4.5 hours (6-10:30).
Teams (from what i remember):
GT Qurbani: Basically stole every single NYU Pandemonium concept that one could possibly steal except not executed well and not clean. Guys in jumpsuits and guys wearing bhangra vardiyaan in alternating dancing segments. Guy in girl's wigs coming out to do some feminine moves. Grabing khundey in the middle and jumping around. They stole Delaware Kamaal's "I'm on a boat" segment.
UNC Bhangra Elite: I won't review, since it's my team.
Southern Raaspitality: Awesome costumes, but I'm not the best judge of raas. They had a live dhol part I think, which was pretty cool.
ECU Bhangra: Brought an 8 person set. I can see the clear influence from KPGD Nikhil and Sumeet
. I think you guys can go really far with a little cleaning up. I liked the beginning mela with the jumping over saaps segment and of course the Miss Pooja dubstep jhummar. I think you guys need to work on stamina though because everyone looked pretty dead for the last couple of songs.
Champa and Chameli: Not nearly as impressive as I remember them being last year at Dance Fusion, but i guess it's earlier in the year. They were a lot messier than usual and overall, there existed a lack of excitement. Costumes were very average too.
GSU Paheli: Surprised a lot of people in the crowd! Overall a very exciting performance that was relatively clean. I think they incorporated a wide range of moves and songs in their mix.
Bulldawg/Aasman Bhangra: A collaboration of two teams, with six guys from each. The intro video was awesome. However, it was extremely messy and I saw a lot of SGPD and NJ hints in the choreo. In the first ten seconds, there was a major line messup with saaps. The team was wearing two different sets of vardiyaan, so there was no coherence. I liked the little salute move during the Salaama jhummar. I think with a little more practice, this could have been okay, but there were a lot if mistakes. A below average all guys team. There were some creative segments though.
GT Ramblin Raas: Unfortunate that their lighting was messed up. It looked pretty good, but, once again, I don't know too much about raas.
UNC Ek Taal: Breathtaking Ganesh story with a gorgeous backdrop. Extremely clean and very epic.
Duke Dhamaka: Klasikhz mix! Awesome! We all went wild when we heard the tag in the intro video. I really like the direction this team is going in and the saaps segment was really cool! There also was a lot of cool diagonal formations. The jhummar was on point too. One thing I would recommend is learning to tie paghs without a ton of pins and making the turla more rounded. Overall, pretty clean for so early in the year.
Winners:
GT Ramblin Raas - Raas
GT Qurbani - Fusion
UGa Bulldawg Bhangra - Bhangra
Judging: The judging for this competition was absolutely and clearly biased for the second year in a row. I wholeheartedly believe at this point that NO ONE from out of the state of Georgia should ever apply to this competition ever again. There was only one judge per category, though all judged all the teams. However, the "category" judge was worth 80%, thus rendering the other two judges useless. Not releasing this criteria was ludicrous, as well as not being able to give the names of the judges prior to the show, as our team was promised that there would be new judges. The six winners from the past two years have all been GEORGIA teams and even people in the audience know the judges are biased. My recommendation is to spend less time worrying about booking a "hot artist" and more on the actual competition itself.
Baba Kahn was flashing pictures of women's cleavage and subliminal messages during their 40 minute performance.
Taking teams' registration money and not giving them a fair shot is absolutely unacceptable and downright thievery.
[SIZE=x-large]Overall[/SIZE][SIZE=x-large]: This was quite possibly the worst show/competition that I have ever been to and that appears to be the general opinion. So, if you are a bhangra team here, I HIGHLY encourage you to NOT apply for this competition in the future. Don't buy their lies of changing their fairness and their organization because it simply didn't happen this year.[/SIZE]
Rangoli is a competition held by Mercer University in Macon, GA, that showcases three styles of dance: bhangra, fusion, and raas with a single winner in each category. On most teams' lists, this is considered a minor event to warm up before attending actual competitions. Teams are enticed to come because of the $1000 prize for each category, year after year, in addition to a special South Asian Performer (last year was Jay Sean, this was was Lomaticc, Sunny Brown, and Baba Kahn).
If you are an organizer or part of this show planning whatsoever, please read this very carefully if you ever want any out-of-state teams to ever apply to your show ever again.
I will start off with my experience.
Rehearsals: They started at 6:30 AM. This is an inconvenience of course, but, as soon as my team arrived at the venue, we were informed that the rehearsal time was delayed by over an hour. This is unacceptable, as my team was second in the show order, leading to no possible way to have that sort of delay. In addition, this is probably one of the only competitions in which there are no liaisons whatsoever, leaving all the teams confused in Macon, GA - a city that isn't very welcoming or anything at all to be honest.
Actual Show: There were numerous technical blunders during the course of the show. There was a point where the tech staff played our intro video with no sound at all, then gave us lip whenever we asked them to play it again with sound. During the course of this, there was no effort made by the staff to inform the audience of what was happening. There literally was a blackout for 10 straight minutes with no emcee interaction. This happened to numerous teams. In addition, one raas teams' lighting didn't go on for a good 10 seconds into their routine. There were literally 50-75 people left to watch the winners as everyone was tired of being the auditorium for 4.5 hours (6-10:30).
Teams (from what i remember):
GT Qurbani: Basically stole every single NYU Pandemonium concept that one could possibly steal except not executed well and not clean. Guys in jumpsuits and guys wearing bhangra vardiyaan in alternating dancing segments. Guy in girl's wigs coming out to do some feminine moves. Grabing khundey in the middle and jumping around. They stole Delaware Kamaal's "I'm on a boat" segment.
UNC Bhangra Elite: I won't review, since it's my team.
Southern Raaspitality: Awesome costumes, but I'm not the best judge of raas. They had a live dhol part I think, which was pretty cool.
ECU Bhangra: Brought an 8 person set. I can see the clear influence from KPGD Nikhil and Sumeet
. I think you guys can go really far with a little cleaning up. I liked the beginning mela with the jumping over saaps segment and of course the Miss Pooja dubstep jhummar. I think you guys need to work on stamina though because everyone looked pretty dead for the last couple of songs.Champa and Chameli: Not nearly as impressive as I remember them being last year at Dance Fusion, but i guess it's earlier in the year. They were a lot messier than usual and overall, there existed a lack of excitement. Costumes were very average too.
GSU Paheli: Surprised a lot of people in the crowd! Overall a very exciting performance that was relatively clean. I think they incorporated a wide range of moves and songs in their mix.
Bulldawg/Aasman Bhangra: A collaboration of two teams, with six guys from each. The intro video was awesome. However, it was extremely messy and I saw a lot of SGPD and NJ hints in the choreo. In the first ten seconds, there was a major line messup with saaps. The team was wearing two different sets of vardiyaan, so there was no coherence. I liked the little salute move during the Salaama jhummar. I think with a little more practice, this could have been okay, but there were a lot if mistakes. A below average all guys team. There were some creative segments though.
GT Ramblin Raas: Unfortunate that their lighting was messed up. It looked pretty good, but, once again, I don't know too much about raas.
UNC Ek Taal: Breathtaking Ganesh story with a gorgeous backdrop. Extremely clean and very epic.
Duke Dhamaka: Klasikhz mix! Awesome! We all went wild when we heard the tag in the intro video. I really like the direction this team is going in and the saaps segment was really cool! There also was a lot of cool diagonal formations. The jhummar was on point too. One thing I would recommend is learning to tie paghs without a ton of pins and making the turla more rounded. Overall, pretty clean for so early in the year.
Winners:
GT Ramblin Raas - Raas
GT Qurbani - Fusion
UGa Bulldawg Bhangra - Bhangra
Judging: The judging for this competition was absolutely and clearly biased for the second year in a row. I wholeheartedly believe at this point that NO ONE from out of the state of Georgia should ever apply to this competition ever again. There was only one judge per category, though all judged all the teams. However, the "category" judge was worth 80%, thus rendering the other two judges useless. Not releasing this criteria was ludicrous, as well as not being able to give the names of the judges prior to the show, as our team was promised that there would be new judges. The six winners from the past two years have all been GEORGIA teams and even people in the audience know the judges are biased. My recommendation is to spend less time worrying about booking a "hot artist" and more on the actual competition itself.
Baba Kahn was flashing pictures of women's cleavage and subliminal messages during their 40 minute performance.
Taking teams' registration money and not giving them a fair shot is absolutely unacceptable and downright thievery.
[SIZE=x-large]Overall[/SIZE][SIZE=x-large]: This was quite possibly the worst show/competition that I have ever been to and that appears to be the general opinion. So, if you are a bhangra team here, I HIGHLY encourage you to NOT apply for this competition in the future. Don't buy their lies of changing their fairness and their organization because it simply didn't happen this year.[/SIZE]
