**CORNELL BHANGRA @ BIB 7 - 2nd Place**

[Anik915]

Hello BTF!


Here is our video from BIB this past weekend - Thank you Harjot for your amazing work and persistence in helping us improve this art - we are all so thankful to have you.


It's been a crazy ride since WBBC - my team has worked unbelievably hard - it is their persistence and passion that pushes us forward. Made this set with Taisu Kumar and Armaan Kapoor - 2 of the illest bhangra dancers, choreographers, and formation makers I know. I may be leaving next year, but I know these 2 will be creating amazing sets for Cornell for years to come.


Big shout out to the following individuals for their support:


1) Kartik Shastri - what can I say bro, missed you so much this semester, but your advice & encouragement throughout the semester were always key. You're a lifelong brother and we couldn't have done this without you.


2) Pavan Kottamasu - you're a sound track specialist, all I can say is thank you for everything.


3) Sharmila Bisaria & Shiva Bhargava - our alumni who came to support us when we really needed it. Much love


4) Kaveen and Rohan - you two were some of the best liaisons I've ever worked with. Logistically you were perfect. But not only that, it seemed that you really loved our team, and cared for our well-being; really felt the love.


5) The BIB Committee - you provided my team with one of the most organized, fun, and relaxed competitions we have ever been to. I will post a full review over Thanksgiving, but you all are perfect.


6) Hardeep Singh - you came as our pagg tier, but I feel that you left as a lifelong friend. Already miss you bro, but I'll see you soon, whether it's at a comp, at Pao, or in Boston


7) Cornell Bhangra - we are not a 12 person team. We are a 30 person team, and it is a 30 person effort that brings our performances to stage. I love you guys.


8) Sahil Jain - my Co/President, but more so best friend as we try to carry this team in our own way. Been a great journey, from freshman to seniors we've done this all together. Love you man.


9) The Dancers who never stopped believing:


Yellow: Anik Saha / Mahak Goel
Blue: Brennan Chu / Malvika Raj
Purple: Armaan Kapoor / Stephanie Guo
Orange: Taisu Kumar / Romoli Bakshi
Green: Sahil Jain / Darah Barnes
Red: Vinay Rajur / Ashley George


Enjoy the video guys!


Cornell Bhangra @ Bhangra In The Burgh 2013

 

[spandanagrawal]

Its an honor to have you as captain bro! Can't wait for next semester!

 

[yraparla]

[edit: moved the specific critiques to email for better dialogue]

There were lots of great segments :
- the staggered triplets after saaps, I liked that you weren't in the standard 3x4.
- putt jattan de squats (maybe turn it into a mela?)
- finale was energetic especially bari barsi stomps

Issues:
- I felt like the girls were constantly directly behind a guy, or in windows outside of center (i.e. yellow blue guys split middle with girls on the outside windows behind them). Besides a couple formations movements and bari barsi stomps, I hardly feel like they got a chance to show off and be center of attention. For instance in khunde spins, they're behind the guys!! And they finish that segment behind guys too.

Overall enjoyably fun set, expand on the new ideas and keep pushing your creativity, I think there's a lot of great performances to come!

 

[Gabroo Tv]

Thank you Harjot for your amazing work and persistence in helping us improve this art - we are all so thankful to have you.

The love and respect is mutual. Enjoy the video!

 

[Madhuri]

In all honesty I wouldn't have placed you guys personally specifically for this reason, there were too many coed teams with strong girls and the contrast was obvious (and by personally I mean ignoring rubric, not that if i were a judge i would not have placed you).

Overall enjoyably fun set, but missing that cornell vision for me...possibly because I saw some of the concepts at WBBC. Expand on the new ideas and keep pushing your creativity, I think there's a lot of great performances to come!

I’m not an avid BTF poster, but I couldn’t help but comment on two things...
First of all, a successful dance team is not defined purely by its dancing talent. Its about the entire set and the overall impact it has on the audience as well as the judges. As an experienced Bhangra dancer, your bhangra instincts should draw you towards a team that is all rounded. IMO the (apparently) weak dancers were overcompensated by other aspects of the set-mix, choreo, formations etc.
…MORE importantly, I think that its a little unprofessional to tell a placing team that you would not have placed them (for whatever personal/non rubric related reasons you may have). It’s important to be respectful and stick to constructive criticism (which you did until the very end). Lets not allow our personal opinions to undermine all the hard work a team put into their performance.
Anyway, proud of Cornell! Wish I could have watched the set live!=(

 

[mrchicity]

As a dancer and choreographer I'm not a fan of this style, but as a judge, I can see why this set was worthy of placing. What you guys seem to do better than most teams is you have specific ideas and concepts and you fully develop them. I can see and appreciate the thought process that went into this set, and I thought that the most impressive part was when your two guys do a million betkaan, that was smart and very effective.


That said, this whole set is so stop and go, there's no real folk or traditional feeling. The saap segment is an example of this, you are very precise with how you open and close saaps and it looks very clean, but it feels very mechanical and it doesn't feel very natural. Something about that detracted greatly from your performance for me. Another part which just didn't gel with me was dhamaal where half your team is just sitting and chilling for a while. I get that it's a concept, but I personally don't like to see a team taking such a huge break in the middle of a performance, and I think that it should've affected your score on energy.


Props to you guys for making a very clean set and developing your dancers to the point where you really dance like a team on stage. There were definite high points and clear concepts, but I just wasn't a huge fan of the set. I think you can go a long way in making a set that retains the ideas but keeps a more natural (folk) and consistent flow.

 

[Aditya]

In all honesty I wouldn't have placed you guys personally specifically for this reason, there were too many coed teams with strong girls and the contrast was obvious (and by personally I mean ignoring rubric, not that if i were a judge i would not have placed you).

Overall enjoyably fun set, but missing that cornell vision for me...possibly because I saw some of the concepts at WBBC. Expand on the new ideas and keep pushing your creativity, I think there's a lot of great performances to come!

I’m not an avid BTF poster, but I couldn’t help but comment on two things...
First of all, a successful dance team is not defined purely by its dancing talent. Its about the entire set and the overall impact it has on the audience as well as the judges. As an experienced Bhangra dancer, your bhangra instincts should draw you towards a team that is all rounded. IMO the (apparently) weak dancers were overcompensated by other aspects of the set-mix, choreo, formations etc.
…MORE importantly, I think that its a little unprofessional to tell a placing team that you would not have placed them (for whatever personal/non rubric related reasons you may have). It’s important to be respectful and stick to constructive criticism (which you did until the very end). Lets not allow our personal opinions to undermine all the hard work a team put into their performance.
Anyway, proud of Cornell! Wish I could have watched the set live!=(

Seeing as how Swi is a judge (and a damn good one at that), his statement on whether he would place them or not is actually quite professional and is absolutely constructive. It gives an insight into how a judge thinks and tells the team what things that he thinks they need to improve on to place in his eyes, which is completely relevant and important for any team to know.

 

[Anik915]

Appreciate the feedback from everyone - I take it all in and try to improve what we bring to the table. Lets try to keep our conversations focused on the performance, and not on irrelevant semantics. Thank you for the reviews (especially Karthik for taking the time on his own Birthday - Happy birthday bro!)

Moving Forward,
Anik

 

[yraparla]

First of all, a successful dance team is not defined purely by its dancing talent. Its about the entire set and the overall impact it has on the audience as well as the judges. As an experienced Bhangra dancer, your bhangra instincts should draw you towards a team that is all rounded. IMO the (apparently) weak dancers were overcompensated by other aspects of the set-mix, choreo, formations etc.

I would say I'm one of the more balanced on the topic of dancing execution vs set vision, so you're preaching to the choir. You completely misunderstood my point, that despite the girls being weaker (which I assumed was the impetus for the formation choice), they danced well enough that by being hidden so often focus shifted to WHY are they being hidden (and thus looking for their mistakes). So I'm directly questioning the set choices, not the dance ability.

No one's comments should ever undermine hardwork. A placing is nothing but the decision of a few people... hard work is hardly undermined by the opinion of one more. Teams would do well to remember that placings are forgotten over time, but the impact of great performances reverberate through the stage connecting legacies and legends

 

[J-Skeet]

In all honesty I wouldn't have placed you guys personally specifically for this reason, there were too many coed teams with strong girls and the contrast was obvious (and by personally I mean ignoring rubric, not that if i were a judge i would not have placed you).

Overall enjoyably fun set, but missing that cornell vision for me...possibly because I saw some of the concepts at WBBC. Expand on the new ideas and keep pushing your creativity, I think there's a lot of great performances to come!

I’m not an avid BTF poster, but I couldn’t help but comment on two things...
First of all, a successful dance team is not defined purely by its dancing talent. Its about the entire set and the overall impact it has on the audience as well as the judges. As an experienced Bhangra dancer, your bhangra instincts should draw you towards a team that is all rounded. IMO the (apparently) weak dancers were overcompensated by other aspects of the set-mix, choreo, formations etc.
…MORE importantly, I think that its a little unprofessional to tell a placing team that you would not have placed them (for whatever personal/non rubric related reasons you may have). It’s important to be respectful and stick to constructive criticism (which you did until the very end). Lets not allow our personal opinions to undermine all the hard work a team put into their performance.
Anyway, proud of Cornell! Wish I could have watched the set live!=(

It's a forum. People will and should state their opinion regardless if it offends you or not. Also he didn't attack you guys imo, js

 

[amancheema]

First of all, a successful dance team is not defined purely by its dancing talent.

This is the problem. It really should be. Kind of like saying a successful basketball team is not defined purely by its basketball talent.


Audience reaction is cute, but should not trump the importance of raw talent.

 

[amancheema]

Entertaining set though.. congrats on the placing! those 2 guys doing the bhetkaan had to have had some redic energy haha

 

[Armaan Kapoor]

Thanks for the feedback so far Swi and Karthik! Definitely great points that we'll consider going into next semester - we pride ourselves on developing original concepts and want to take it to the next level now with the quality and complexity of our dancing, especially now that some our newer dancers have gotten a taste of competitions this semester!

 

[venividivici]

Loved it! I'm so tired of collegiate teams doing the same generic sets, trying to emulate what VCU was doing 5 years ago. This was refreshing and definitely worthy of placing.

The only feedback I have is that some of the sound effects in your mix were overly used.

Keep it up!


P.S.: relative to other teams at Burgh there wasn't a noticeable difference in dancer strength to me

 

[SGupta7]

First off, congrats on the placing! Well deserved based on execution, cleanliness, and entertainment value. However, after seeing videos of you guys from WBBC last year and watching you live at TDot/Burgh this year, I felt like I was having deja vu. A lot of your hard hitting, more entertaining segments were from your WBBC set. In some cases the segment's place in the routine was changed (like from the middle to the beginning), in some cases the same choreo was used to a different song, or the same song to slightly different choreo.


I realize that this is something that a lot of independent teams do, but I haven't seen it as much from collegiate teams (maybe I just haven't been watching enough bhangra). I know that it's first semester and that most collegiate teams don't have the resources to practice over the summer, but I guess I got kind of bored seeing some of the same gimmicks.


On that same note, as a first time viewer your set is immensely entertaining and given that the judges may be seeing your set for the first time, the placing makes sense. I was just hoping to see a completely new and creative set from you guys since you were so innovative last year. Hopefully that creativity will come through next semester!


-Shawn

 

[arnab]

To start, I'll say that I truly appreciate the style that Cornell brings to the circuit. I mean, here we are always complaining about how bhangra is dying and all the teams look the same...but when a team actually comes out to take a risk and try something different, it isn't always a warm welcome. The other thing is that it's a style that really appeals to the audience. I remember walking being back on campus around WBBC and would overhear complete randos asking their friends if they've seen the Cornell video yet. If a team can do that for bhangra, that's WAY more impressive than a trophy.


About the dance - I really enjoyed it! Yeah, some of the segments were re-used, but this is a team that invests a lot in cleanliness so I'm sure it takes more than the few short weeks in the fall semester to get there. Props to Taisu and Armaan for like the million betka and all the new girls on the team for getting up to speed so quickly. One part that was a little weird to me was the initial josh jhummar formation...i would have loved to see Mr. Chu and co. in a more spread out formation.

 

[Armaan Kapoor]

Just to clarify, those two saints who do the million betkas are Taisu Kumar (orange) and Vinay Rajur (Red)!

 

[arnab]

Just to clarify, those two saints who do the million betkas are Taisu Kumar (orange) and Vinay Rajur (Red)!

you should have taken the credit brah

 

[anuRAGE]

Anik, you are one creative guy, kudos for sticking to exactly what sets you guys apart and coming out with a win. Also, your nakhra is too cute When I saw the placings, I was really pleased and amazed just from knowing how many of the competing performers from last year this team had lost this season. This can be a huge problem for teams but all of the dancers did a great job, congrats to everyone for that! Specifically, wanted to say Armaan and Taisu you guys have been consistently improving in nakhra and energy-wise (esp at 3:57), keep it up! Huge props to the betka guys, that was unreal


While alot of the major crowd pleasers do come from the old routines it seems, I still appreciated some of the new additions. The fact that this team looks like none other any time they hit the stage is a huge plus. Reverse phumaniya segment was sweet and played out very well. Loved the choreo for the Kaka segment and formations for khunde segment have always and continue to amaze me, execution was solid!


For things to improve, I don't think this is a general critique, just something I noticed a few times, but I thought some dancers need to work on widening their down and up steps, feet are too close together and its noticeable in some parts. I think the biggest thing to improve with the set overall is the formations directly covering people as mentioned. They are great in parts, but overall needs to showcase jodis more equally as time goes on. For that dhamaal squat and hold move, I think the effect is cool but 8 counts of 8 people just sitting and doing that move is a little too much, 4 counts would have the same effect.

One part that was a little weird to me was the initial josh jhummar formation...i would have loved to see Mr. Chu and co. in a more spread out formation.

Agree with his, jhummar was my least favorite part of the set and also a segment where noone should be covered imo. I thought the beginning was sweet with each group of 2 turning, but the formation didnt show that well at all, it wouldve definitely helped to spread that out. And personally, I thought a slower version of the bit from 3:02 until the Anik/Brennan duet wouldve been more consistent with the mood of the segment. Didn't like the stop and go bit at the end of jhummar either.

Overall, very impressed with this performance, but I know it's going to get much much better Congrats guys!

 

[hardeep_singh]

6) Hardeep Singh - you came as our pagg tier, but I feel that you left as a lifelong friend. Already miss you bro, but I'll see you soon, whether it's at a comp, at Pao, or in Boston

i hope i get to hang out with cornell bhangra again, amazing team, thank you for giving me the chance to be a part of it for the weekend. definitely one of the most memorable comp experiences i've ever had. cornell bhangra is a great example of what bhangra is all about, a group of talented individuals who come together to support each other and put on a great performance. it was really refreshing seeing how well all of the team members got along so well with each other, with other teams, with the committee, and watching all the videos again it struck me how well you guys hit it off with the crowd. keep up the legacy. definitely coming to pao bro.