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Cornell Bhangra @ Tashan 2017!

srazdan

Active Member
Messages
11
Hi BTF,

Here is Cornell Bhangra's performance at Temple University Tashan held this past weekend. Congrats to BDS and AEG on their respective placings! My co-captains and I could not have been more proud of the progress our team and our dancers have accomplished so far and are excited to see how far we go in the coming semesters.

Any and all feedback is much appreciated!

Here are a few thanks that are inevitably due:
- Tessie and Amber and the entire Tashan committee for being so accommodating and flexible!
- our liaisons, who were literally the best liaisons we have ever had, hands down - Swati Patel and Riya Jain
- DJ Baaj & PablaMix for coming through on the mix literally last minute
- Gundeep from DCMPAA for playing dhol with us
- Tejasvir for helping us design amazing new vardi

Dancers:
Red: Sonali Razdan* & Girish Jayant
Ferozi: Emily Chei & Samir Jain*
Dark Blue: Amanda Pathmanathan* & Arjun Iyer
Pink: Nikhita Sundaram & Rithesh Neelamagam
Purple: Snigdha Kasi & Vignesh Nandakumar
Yellow: Nidhi Dontula & Kanaai Shah
* - captains


This is the video that our liaison took for us. Hopefully we can update the video link to the official video soon.

Thanks!
 

sumeetj

Active Member
Messages
631
great job cornell!

its obvious you guys have put in work to change your style up and train a bunch of new dancers - always a struggle for collegiate teams, especially when you are competing so soon after the academic year begins. i think your set had alot of interesting drops and pleasing parts - the pause + head tilt before your phumania, for example, was a clean, nice touch.

the biggest critique that i have, that i believe will make the difference between this set placing and not - is some of the dancing basics. some of the dancers are putting in alot of energy, and that is great - building stamina along with learning new choreo in just a few weeks is tough. but there were a few dancers, male ones especially, who weren't finishing moves because they wanted to "wind up" to hit the next one harder (ie instead of finishing beat 4 of a move, they are already transitioning to the next move) - there are times that this is built into the choreo, but it is noticeable when some dancers are doing it and some arent, and it makes the set look messier (the really wide stage doesn't help either). this gets even more noticeable when going too hard results in making mistakes with footwork (ie ending on wrong foot, etc)

similarly, with going really hard, alot of dancers are shaking from their arms/hands as opposed to from their shoulders - they should try to stiffen up their arms and shake from the chest/shoulders instead. i would encourage you guys to wear wrist phuman as well, they dont have to be massive like the doley ones, but it will help you guys look cleaner from your hands (right now the lack of wrist phuman make the doley phuman look extra big to me).

i think you are well on your way to killing it next semester and be a solid force in the collegiate circuit - plz compete as much as you can and with some tighter dancing, youll be looking great in no time :)

ps - alot of the critiques above are just personal preferences of mine on form/move execution, and for most part they are relatively widespread principles, but doesn't mean every judge will agree - just wanted to put that disclaimer out there
 

R_Sharma

Member
Messages
22
C-c-c-cornelllll is back!!!!

For real guys, awesome job with innovating Cornell's style and dancing--not an easy feat for a team thats been around for so long. I agree with a lot of what Sumeet said, keep hammering those basics with everyone. Its great to be able to add some more nakhra/josh at a drop but when you sacrifice form it really takes away from the choreo. Start working on different ways to also hit those drops choreowise--I saw a lot of 180 jumps/spins which start to lose their effect after you've seen it a few times in the set already.

I can PM you guys more specific things, but overall watching this video made me super excited to see what y'all will bring next

btw new vardi are hot...gonna miss the bear though;)
 

Howie Magz

Well-Known Member
Messages
454
Great come back and i am very glad you guys got new vardiyan!!!! Overall I think this is a improvement in terms of set construction and overall style of the team. I agree with the comments made above by Sumeet in regards to the overall form of the team. I can tell there are a lot of new dancers on the team because of the execution. It seems a lot of the dancers are shaking their arms as opposed to their shoulders. Other critiques include the formations. You guys have the cluster formation for a lot of the segments which is quite repetitive. Other things to fix is the basics. Regardless of how tired you guys are, you have to pick up your legs and still maintain composure. In regards to expressing energy, going buck wild does not mean losing your form which was apparent in certain segments. I thought jhoomer was weak and it looked like everyone was kind of doing their own nahkra. Saaps could of been harder hitting and lacked energy. I think if you take all these things that were said on this thread and if you were to fix them, you guys will go from a team in the lineup to a plcing team overall.
 

nikhil95

Member
Messages
46
Glad to see you guys back it! Everything said above is spot on and super important. Strong fundamentals (extension with arms and lifting your legs higher), modhe, and more consistent energy throughout would have made this a very competitive set. You guys definitely could have spent more time cleaning the set, I know its tough since its so early, but I would schedule more time for it next semester. The biggest piece of advice I could give is not to waste the time in the rest of this semester. Start fixing those things now, don't wait until next semester to start working on things. For captains, same thing when it comes to edits to the set.
 

bgala

New Member
Messages
4
Amazing and entertaining from start to finish. Change in Cornell style was executed the right away. You got everyone excited for what's to come for this team. And you guys were an awesomely fun team this weekend!

Moving forward, for the next set, think about your colors/johris. From 4:52 onwards, the way y'all set formations, the colors/johris were all over the place. And if the concepts you guys have in mind give way to tough color situations, at the very least make sure the colors are aligned during big moments (for example @ 6:30, this drop needs to have johris next to eachother).

Good luck for whatever you guys have next and hope to meet y'all again.

- Bhavin, BDS
 

sahab

Well-Known Member
Messages
169
Glad to see the new style. If there was a category for creativeness, I would take a good deal of points away from that. I see a STRONG similarity in your choreo to FCB and CMU , but I wont knock you too hard on that because you have to start somewhere.

During formations, ensure that dancers move at the same speed if they are supposed too. I saw formations were dancers are catching up to their spots. It takes away from crispyness and cleanliness.

One thing that won't show up on a rubric is memorability. You want the judge the walk out of the comp remembering something positive about your performance. It can be a move/formation/gimmick. Just keep that in mind. This may help take you take it to the next level once you get your form and style down.

Clean, clean, clean and improve on form and you will be good.

-Sahab
 

MohitoK

Active Member
Messages
98
Props on the turn around, it's always so hard with college teams. I think people in the comments have already done a really good job summarizing a majority of the feedback. My main critique is that the set lacked grace throughout. When your team tries to dance all out, you almost try too hard with both facial expressions and over exaggerated movements. If you can maintain posture and proper nakhra while going all out, it will make a huge difference. I would definitely check out some live teams from India for perfect examples of this. Good luck the rest of the year!
 
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