Competitions: Collegiate vs. Unrestricted

[Vick]

I guess you have to be a dancer to see what blowout really has to offer, because as a fan of bhangra, the blowout environment is no where as good as some other competitions I've been to. I guess it's all relative... I can see why people love it, it's fun hearing people from your school go crazy when they hear their teams name announced, but the quality of bhangra is not up to par with other competitions. Coming from a College Football crazy town like Blacksburg, trust me Havish, you can't recreate Blacksburg in any other part of the world... hahaha...

 

[Harvin Singh]

meistro....all of vcu bhangra's dancers attend vcu...thats something that is actually required in our team constitution

I would like to be a front running candidate for PPA....and you bet IT'S EFFFIN FOLK ALRIGHT!!!

 

[dheerja]

one thing would be nice, is if blowout got an independent team to do exhibition(they could have applications for exhibition, and even if GW were to only pay HALF of what they pay those artist, im sure many teams would apply), along with GW of course, instead of having an artist get up there and lip sync......i think watching nachdi or sgpd or anyother team perform at blowout would be nice to see.

blowout 2004, they had kj and siac perform as exhibition acts...that was also the year of the infamous new 5 k's, so they kinda shot themselves in the foot with that one in regards to drawing power for teams

i was about to mention the same thing about kj and siac. And Imran mentioned that Soormay would've loved to have come out to blowout...
i mean...put an exhibition other than gw up as well and see what happens. They had 2 guest singers...and some kids dancing this year...i could've gone without some of that and would've loved to have seen ohhh...i don't know, some other teams that bring a different flavor than co-ed stuff. Sher Foundation would've really entertained the crowd with their Bruin choreo...but it's all good.

I don't mind Blowout's rules and stuff...makes it a bit more competitive making sure EVERYONE goes to your school is on the team...but i would like a little more than just seeing college teams. Bring an established team out (independent) for an exhibition.

Definitely agree about the exhibition. The worst part about Blowout are the acts that are so ridiculously boring. I remember when Manak-E performed the teams were practically booing him off the stage he was so bad. Most of the singers just lip-synch anyway. Considering how much money they must spend bringing these singers to perform, they can DEFINITELY get Sher or KJ or another team with a different style.

Also, going back to teams that have names representing a school, but the majority of its members are alums or just live in the area...I think it's a good thing that Blowout requires all members to attend the school, otherwise it's tough to draw the line. Without that rule you can have teams with only one member that is from that school, or teams like UBC Girlz that are alums but have been around for so many years.

 

[Havish]

Ya Vick your right, you can't recreate Vtech football, but im saying its along the same lines...

 

[Hans]

Collegiate competitions give those up-and-coming college teams a good opportunity to get in the scene. However, I still think that these competitions should allow independent teams to apply and perform. When I was on Soormay, I'd call Blowout EVERY year and see if they had changed their stance about collegiate coed teams- no dice. That would've been an amazing experience, to dance in Constitution Hall with 5000 in the audience.

From a business standpoint, you need to allow independent teams in so you can at least recover your costs. Teams like Sher, KJ, NJ, UBC, SGPD, LBC, VCU, etc. are all big attractions and can only lead to more $ if youre the organizer. Maybe if committees alloted 2-3 spots for independent teams that might help?

Yeah, I agree with NSC, that it's not really going to make a huge difference in terms of ticket sales if you get some of those independent teams to come out. The fact is, that Blowout usually does fill up their venue every year (except for two years ago when the ticket prices were even more outrageous than normal). Because it's a college comp, and most of the teams are from nearby schools, everyone brings a huge crowd. That's why the audience is so full and lively every year. Also, I think the audience capacity is around 3500 and not 5000.

I don't like Blowout for a lot of reasons (their organizational committees are consistently terrible and the tech always screws something up bigtime), but I really like the collegiate aspect. In addition to everything other people have brought up about competing on a level playing field and watching teams rise and fall over time, I think Blowout generally breeds a lot more creativity than most other comps, too. I think this past year was a little different because the judging criteria was so traditional, the committee picked a lot of teams with very similar styles, but usually you get a great mix of styles and all the teams try to put something really creative and special in their routines to get attention. I'm not saying that independent teams aren't creative, but they usually take themselves a lot more seriously than some collegiate teams, so they won't go as balls-out as Blowout teams have in the past (MIT?). But of course, there are exceptions to this.

 

[mafzal]

That new comp in Atlanta called So You Think You Can Naach is college-only. Pretty cool. It's a mixed comp though - raas/fusion/bhangra - but all teams gotta be school representatives. What else is collegiate only besides Blowout? Or what has been in past?

Personally I think having some collegiate comps is good, definitely think there should be 2-3 a year.

On the UBC students issue, if all the dancers carry that school name w/ pride and really represent that school and the school knows it has a bhangra team i.e. they are registered student orgs or whatever, then I think they should be considered college teams even if only half the dancers actually attend school there. So I don't know what the situation of UBC girls is but to be honest only 4 [half] of our dancers go to UM-D but we do practice on campus, all the dancers participate in campus events and represent the school w/ pride and spirit, and we are registered school org (school does know we have outside dancers too). I definitely consider our team a college team. A little more discussion about this does come up in the "Recruiting" thread.

 

[dheerja]

That new comp in Atlanta called So You Think You Can Naach is college-only. Pretty cool. It's a mixed comp though - raas/fusion/bhangra - but all teams gotta be school representatives. What else is collegiate only besides Blowout? Or what has been in past?

Blowout is the only purely collegiate bhangra competition. A lot of the fusion/raas competitions require dancers to be from one school, but when it comes to legit bhangra comps, Blowout is the only one.