Cornell Bhangra @ NKD 2018

[Amanda Pathmanathan]

Hello BTF!

We present to you Cornell Bhangra’s performance from this past weekend at Nach Ke Dikha in Williamsburg, Virginia. Congrats to Illini and GT Bhangra on their respective placings!

Being our 20th anniversary, our team came a long way in terms of rebranding at Tashan and pushing our limits in our performance at NKD. We brought more hype choreo, a sick mix, and our dancers gave it their all throughout the performance until the very end. We are determined to come back stronger than ever at our next competition!

~Chak de Cornell~

Please leave feedback on our performance, we would really appreciate it!


A huge thank you to:
- Srijan & Prakrit and the entire NKD committee for being so accommodating and flexible this weekend!
- Our liaisons, who helped us through the weekend: Akash Palani & Shaina Moondra
- PablaMix for taking our mix to the next level as always
-Dilbagh Nagi for tying paghs
-Snigdha Kasi for the amazing visuals we had during the performance
-Deepthi John for our sick intro video


Dancers:
Dark Blue: Sonali Razdan* & Girish Jayant
Ferozi: Amanda Pathmanathan* & Kanaai Shah
Red: Nikhita Sundaram & Rithesh Neelamagam
Pink: Vignesh Nandakumar & Nidhi Dontula
Purple: Snigdha Kasi & Viraj Patel
Yellow: Arjun Iyer & Kareena Sagar
Green: Deepthi John
* - captains

 

[srazdan]

Here's the link to the official mix! Shoutout to Pablamix again for being dope.

 

[JesseMangat]

Pros: Re-branding of Cornell I prefer this style much more to the old Cornell (no doubt it was dope haha but just didn’t like the heavy gimmicks) so that’s good. Second energy and enthusiasm was actually solid didn't find a a dancer dead or slacking hella on the side or somethin, couldn't see in the very back tho from these videos. PablaMix did a solid job with the mix and good song choice sometimes that can be really bad with collegiate teams too so thats all good.

Areas for Improvement: When you guys do down legs or dhamaka legs whatever your team calls them, I notice the legs aren’t being picked up with the knees and instead are just being whipped around back down. The other thing would be dancing stance, its much harder to dance lower but if you can teach your dancers to dance with wider legs lower to the ground, you'll see a noticeable difference in appearance, because rn there are multiple times in the set where dancers look like they are just standing there and dancing with their upper body. Shoulders were also lacking, if you have big phumman you should take the extra effort to add and emphasize shoulders so they look better or else the enlarged phumman become pointless and just look bad. Some nakhra was also slightly excessive sometimes, don't let it show in your face for every single drop that you are trying super hard, instead just show you're having a lot of fun on stage and add more grace to your dancing instead of choppy movements.

Other places you most likely lost points but could have been easily avoided, boys chadre, those need to be tied properly we shouldn't be able to their legs exposed, it was especially apparent on moves like jugni and chaal. Lastly you used two folk segments which is great, but they must be executed A1 properly. The Luddi during saaps also had already been done to the exact same song before saaps by BDS at multiple comps including NKD last year, so maybe even changing the song would have helped it look less similar but all I could think of was BDS killing that while watching y’all. Theres a Luddi Exhibition video on youtube that some team in the UK did at TBC, you can watch that and try to imitate that form it was proper. Then for mirza, there are certain beats that mirza needs to be, I’m not sure if y’all told PablaMix it was going to be mirza but you did it to Notorious Jatt, not sure how feasible that is. Nonetheless watch folk/live teams like SPD execute mirza and once again imitate the folk aspects properly to avoid losing points. The counts were too rushed and caused Mirza to be executed poorly.

Those would be my biggest critiques to fix to improve quickly over the summer before next season. Set design wise it had exciting moments, if you were to change anything I'd say have less "stop and go" moves in your set and just create more flow instead, "stop and go" movement with pauses is okay like once or max twice in a set but it just happened way too much. MBT was definitely in a similar position last season, it takes time to re-brand and re-build, take the summer to re-train dancers and excited to see the improvement in the fall, good luck!

 

[UmerQureshi96]

Sorry I'm only getting around to this now @Amanda Pathmanathan I thought I posted my reply a while back.

In terms of fundamentals and mistakes I think y'all can see where y'all stand. Watch some teams like SPD, NJW, etc and emulate their form. I'd honestly listen to the @thebhangrapodcast episode where Nimit and Sid talk about how they got their form and their teams' form up to par.



In terms of set design this was a very solid start for a team like y'all that are really trying to rebuild. You got some solid ideas and a base to build off of for next year. The saap segment started out strong there but what I think fell flat are moments that require a higher level of execution than what y'all did at the comp. For example 2:45 there was that headflick into beitke. It might seem small but in order to get that 'wow' reaction you get when watching an academy/independent you all have to commit to the pause and the flick rather than just one person in the front.
The luddi segment in the middle of saaps really didn't fit in terms of set flow. Think about the momentum you have. You just did a super hard and fast drop and then immediately went into a luddi segment and then went into another fast saap song. That doesn't flow because you are changing speeds quickly without any transitions and it feels off (I can explain this better later). Another thing with the luddi segment is that you have to play to your teams strengths. If your team is full of very graceful jhoomer dancers then do what DRP does and make the sexiest slow jhoomers in the circuit. If your dancers have crazy good nakhra then do all the subtle stuff SPD does. But if most of your team isn't able to execute and really sell a segment then it's not worth doing just yet. I think the luddi segment was something that most of your team likes because there have been some amazing luddi segments in the past year or two, but if you wanna do that segment, you have to do it right.
Personal pet peeve of mine at 4:18, if you're gonna use chickens at a drop, gotta actually do chickens with a full range of motion or it won't hit.
There were also many segments who's purpose I just didn't quite get. at 5:13 you did one segment that had jadoo singha, jhoomer, double dhammal, jodiyaan, chaal, and phummaniya all within 30s which isn't by itself bad. But then the next two segments you also use phummaniya, jhoomer, and chaal. This kinda makes a lot of your segments blend together and makes it harder for me as a viewer to remember those 'moments' in your set. Think about a judge. At the end of the competition they have to remember those drops and moments from your set when in deliberation. But if a lot of your drops are the same and the choreo around those drops are also similar it can be very difficult to remember those drops and thus hard to actually place them.
Lastly, I love that y'all are tryna rebrand and re-establish yourselves as a team within the circuit and I think for the most part you did that with this performance. Focusing on choreo and the set to carry the performance. But when you ended with the C-O-R-N-E-L-L thing you're reminding me of a time when Cornell was a lot better. I'm not saying ditch your past, but don't actively remind me of the past.
Overall this is a solid and unique set in comparison to past Cornell sets and shows y'all are willing to change and that's dope. I apologize if any of this came off kind of harsh it all comes from a place of love and if you want me to elaborate on any of these points please hit me up or give me a call and I'd gladly do so.