CSUN Results

[LostMusing]

You have total 5 posts all in same topic and u r defending yourself a lot.... ;D

Maybe because this link was given out by the committee to show what went on? And there are people here with 5 to 14 posts. Like you.

But enough about me, this is about the bhangra show, right? I was curious about it, put in the link, and here I am. Just because I don't agree with what everyone has to say doesn't mean that I'm much of anything, other than a person who was there, simple as that~

And it's natural human behavior to be defensive. You'd be defensive if I said that you need to find something better to do with your time than sit on a computer and bash people for putting together an event that you weren't able to even begin to start, right? Touche`.

Besides, if I was on the committee, dont you think I would have had an account on here a loooooooooong time ago to talk to the teams? ;D Use logic, brotha~

But if you all want to give me a position of such importance as that and talk about me a bunch, I'm fine with that too ;D

 

[sonali]

u r definitely a committee member.. but u don’t need to be ashamed of anything.

 

[LostMusing]

u r definitely a committee member.. but u don’t need to be ashamed of anything.

Like I said, if you want to give me an important position to where everyone here is talking about me, go ahead. ;D It's awesome being popular, especially in new things. Thanks man, I owe you one.

 

[sonali]

u think being CSUN Committee is being important then you should be ashamed and FYI i am punjabi kuri.. :-[

 

[BDR Official Fan]

Looks like this comp was just an all around bad experience for the teams. Maybe before people begin to organize a comp they should ask a few teams about there basic needs and then organize one around that. If there's no teams then there is no comp. I would have at least expected the judges to keep or dispose of the score cards after they are done with them. Really no reason to just leave them lying around so all the teams can see how they ranked unless no one cares.

 

[LostMusing]

u think being CSUN Committee is being important then you should be ashamed and FYI i am punjabi kuri.. :-[

Well, you'll be talking a lot about me on here, right, regardless of who I may be? :-\ Obviously I'd be of some importance for you to make an issue about who I am or what my identity is...

I would think that throwing people under the bus to make yourself feel better, would be something worth being ashamed about... :-[

But heck, since when do people think of being considerate nowadays? :

 

[Varun]

Ok STOP.


Listen, I do not know or care if CSUN committee members have fake usernames on BTF. What I care about is that our needs and concerns are voiced to them. We should be allowed to judge them from our point of view, just like the judges can judge us from their biases. Of course the teams will be biased and want that the competition be centered around them first, and the audience second. Still, there are a few things every good competition should provide for their teams. Please read the following:

-First of all, congratulations on putting on a relatively entertaining show. From what I heard, no one's performances, lighting cues, or intro videos were messed up. So good job on that.

-The check in time at 10 am and then having the teams go back to the hotel, only to return to the venue for their respective tech times = really stupid idea. Don't worry, we all are responsible enough to wake up on time and be ready for our performances. Next time give each team an exact time for their tech rehearsal. Once they get there, give them a quick tour of the stage, backstage, and let them know any other important procedures (dressing room situation, transportation to venue, parking, etc). Then let them rehearse for 20 minutes on stage. Leave stage, then on to the next team. Simple as that.

- During tech time, bringing the subway sandwiches and water was nice of you guys. Appreciate it.

- I understand that there was a camera man who was broadcasting the show via CCTV into the lobby's TV. It would have been really simple to use that same technology to broadcast it backstage or at least allow the teams' to hang out in the lobby after their performance.

- In my humble opinion, the best person to be a judge is someone who can identify a variety of traditional bhangra moves, understand boliyaan/punjabi songs, comprehend the different styles that exist in North America (and be fair to each style), and have some history of performing/coaching on stage. No exceptions whatsoever for those 4 requirements. Also, to find a qualified judge like that you also need a person on your committee who can recognize which judge knows his/her stuff and which judge doesn't. I did not discern any recognizable faces from the Bhangra community on your committee so I can only assume that you guys weren't very selective in your screening process for judges.

-Treat the scoring sheets like serious documents. In any other competitive sport/activity, the scoring sheets are filled with useful comments that justify the judges decisions. They are then released to the public, or at least the teams.

-Alert the teams on important things they need to know like parking, parking tickets, bus situations. All that stuff. People on my team and other teams all got parking tickets because none of you guys told us what was up.

-Lastly, I was annoyed by the fact that even though we had a great round of applause and cheering after our performance, your MC repeatedly said something along the lines : "Hey, who's booing? Who is booing for Rangla Punjab?" as if he was trying to call attention to it so the judges know. When I asked people in the audience if anyone was booing, they said they did not know what the hell the MC was talking about, as we got a standing ovation from many people. That is an example of impartiality and unprofessionalism.

CSUN, good job on getting the competition done. Now whether it was done properly or not, you can be the judge for that. All i can advise is that in the future take note of all that I have written and it will greatly help your organization. The best way to help the teams is to assign an individual liason who takes care of each team from the time their flight lands to when they reach tech time to when they are to led to stage to transporting them back to the hotel/airport. That way, one person can handle each team's questions, concerns, and be extremely helpful to a group of individuals that are already so worried about putting on a stellar performance that they don't really need anything else bogging them down.

 

[csunsac]

Teams,

First and foremost, I would like to thank all teams for their participation at CSUN Bhangra 2009.

I hope that each and every one of you understands that nothing is perfect the first time around, and we all learn from experience. This was the Revival of CSUN Bhangra...and all of the people who put this on were new to the whole process of putting a bhangra competition together, and therefore - there were mistakes and shortcomings. Nevertheless, our intentions were not foul. We did the best we could to put on a good show. But if, in the process, we did not live up to the expectations of any of the competing teams - We apologize!

Finally, I would like to let you all know that we here at CSUN will not be discouraged by all the criticism but shall accept it in a constructive sense and make sure that we do our best to make the competition better in the years to come.

Once again, thank you teams for being a part of our competition and we wish you all the best for future competitions.

CSUN Bhangra Planning Committee
CSUN South Asia Club (SAC)

 

[Nikhil]

Moderator's Note: Sonali and LostMusing, please stop spamming the forum board with back and forth banter. If you feel the need to do so, please privately message each other. Thank you, and lets keep this discussion healthy.

 

[kinnell]

Varun summed up everything really nicely.

I personally had an amazing time at CSUN. The overall whole experience was a positive one. Good job CSUN. However, as I said before, certain factors of the competition were a mess. And I am curious about certain things that do not seem to have been answered. This is directed to the CSUN committee - and I'm sure that the committee will try to prevent these mistakes from happening again.

Why did the dress rehearsal start so late? Were there technical problems? Did teams not show up? While we were waiting a long ass time, we (Truskool) were told that another team was gonna go before us just because they needed to leave. Obviously, we erupted in outrage and the dress rehearsal line-up was switched back to the original one. Why was this option even available in the first place?

Thanks.

PS - APD, the dancer you guys sent to dance for you guys at the mixer was sick!!! I wish I had gone up and danced with him! ;D

 

[Ravi aka Fravi]

You know it just seems like quality service you can find at other competitions you can't find in socal anymore. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that organizing a competition is an easy task by any means. But nonetheless YOU HAVE TO BE SOMEWHAT ORGANIZED to run a smooth competition that teams will be willing to come back the following year. For example at Socal bhangra, when a volunteer asks you "Do you know the order of the teams?" that is just flat out SAD. When you tell the out of state teams "we can't get you from the airport, find your own way here" that is also really sad. For organizers and voluneers, you guys have an obligation to service the teams within limit, so please uphold to that. I'm not telling anyone how to do their job, but its important to realize the quality of service that's given at these competitions. I haven't heard a lot positive things for Socal and CSUN organization, I just hope there are better improvements for next year. Not trying to offend anyone, so please don't take it up the @$$.

but on a positive note, congrats to CSUN committee for the revival of the competition

 

[Ranjit]

Maybe I should have been more clear about my comments on the white judge. I didn't mean that she wasn't qualified strictly because of her race. There are some white people that I know of who would be great bhangra judges, there a guy named Dave (forgot his last name) that lives on the eastcoast who has made videos on how to play dhol, he probably has atleast seen bhangra before. There is even a guy from UC Santa Barbara who spent a month or so in india with Ustad Garib Dass and he wrote articles on jhummar and sammi. But at csun they never said anything about her qualifications. And I don't think it's racist to ask that the judges atleast be able to understand the music to which teams are dancing.

kinnell, thanks bro, you guys had pretty badass uniforms too, although I don't know how you can dance with phumman that big

 

[Happie]

CONGRATS TO APD!!! You guys are amazing!

 

[anayb]

Wow, it seems as if a lot of teams did not have the same experience that Texas Bhangra had. I personally thought that it went great. We didn't depend on the committee for too much though, as we were told ahead of time what would be provided and what wouldn't.

Mixer - We were the 2nd team to get there, and it was pretty empty for some time. We just ended up playing games and stuff till the rest of the teams came. Don't know why other teams came pretty late, how rides were provided etc... We just drove ourselves there. The mixer itself was.... hmmm... it could have been better. Food was good, but no real dancin or gettin teams hyped like at other comps. The dance-off was a pretty bad idea. I wouldn't suggest doin that again. Or at least incorporate the whole team.

Competition Day - 10 am checkin was hella early no doubt, but it didnt work out too bad for us. We got there, checked in, and prepped for our run through at 1. Had a couple practices outside, with stunts and such (tons of space on this campus for that). Food was provided after our run through, and we basically chilled out till 5, while gettin ready on campus. We booked our hotel 15ish miles away so we just stayed on campus. It was kinda weird that they didn't let us see any other performances, but they told us this at the mixer specifically, so none of us did any sneakin in or anything. They should've had a video stream like the others were suggesting, but it was kinda good not knowing how everybody else did before you went up and performed.

Judging - As I read these posts, people seem to have very different views about judging and who placed and stuff. Someone's post up there said that judging should be done by ensuring that every bhangra dance has a specific set of moves? Don't get me wrong, I'm all about traditionality, and ensuring that our dance has elements of folk like luddi, dhamaal, jhummar and specific moves, but I'm also about crowd entertainment, the mix, and the overall effect of a dance. In my opinion, bhangra competitions are really there to spread punjabi culture all over, and each team will have a specific style geared to a certain crowd. Being on the UT team, we can't focus our routine on keeping only folk elements with folk moves... For example, we did a show for the City of Austin with the Mayor etc... if we went all-live and did though whole traditionality bit to the max, it'd def be hard to entertain a generic audience.

I think competitions understand this. This is why certain competitions are KNOWN to be heavy on traditionality (e.g. DDA) and some are not (Bhangra Fusion @ 25%). Teams should know this going in. With CSUN this was unknown, but since it has revived, and based on the placings, it seems as if it is not a super traditional comp.

Also, a lot of people didn't seem to like the actual juding - Texas getting a 99. The caps haven't shared the score sheet with us, but from what i heard, of the 5 judges, the highest and lowest scores were dropped.... so that wouldn't really make a difference? From what I remember, the crowd reaction was... pretty good. But I wasn't in the audience to see the other dances, so I can't say.....



All in all, Texas has a badass time at CSUN and in Cali, and can't wait till next yearrrrrrrr. Props to the committee for a successful revival.

Shout-out to the APD guys; third comp with them this year, never cease to amaze us - hella chill

In n Out is the shit
So is Pinkberry.

 

[kinnell]

Legit review, anayb. In terms of depending on competitions, it's not that we expected a lot out of the competition. We expected things that the competition said they would have provide us. Is it naive for us to assume that our dress rehearsal will begin at 12:30 PM if the competition tells us it will? We didn't expect everything to be done for us, just the things that they said they would do. Even then, the competition was still a good experience for us too.

Unfortunate that Texas and Truskool weren't able to party together afterwards. I can't wait for the videos. I heard from people that they thought Texas should have placed 1st and that you guys were hella entertaining! However, I must ask - you guys DO know who really won the NBA Finals last year, right?

 

[yraparla]

Also, a lot of people didn't seem to like the actual juding - Texas getting a 99. The caps haven't shared the score sheet with us, but from what i heard, of the 5 judges, the highest and lowest scores were dropped.... so that wouldn't really make a difference?

I Think people's issue with that is either
a) the judge was just ridiculous with assessing points and so they would consistently be towards the higher end and so would always be dropped, essentially weighting hte other judges more heavily
b) or the judge was not discerning and might have placed everyone with higher, but closer marks meaning there was less differentiation between teams (see: two teams for third place)
c) or that the judge may have just been very excited by certain elemetns and not followed the rubric closely enough

it's entirely possible none of those issues are true, but I think everyone's concern is that no team should be getting a 99, there is always something and a 99 is usually indicative of either an inability to criticize/parse the dance or lazy judging, neither of which are good.

In no way does it reflect Texas or anything, I'm sure you all killed it, and you're placing meant obviously multiple people agreed you did extremely well, but the score concerns teams who were there that the judging was not as solid as it could have been.

-Swi

 

[anayb]

Legit review, anayb. In terms of depending on competitions, it's not that we expected a lot out of the competition. We expected things that the competition said they would have provide us. Is it naive for us to assume that our dress rehearsal will begin at 12:30 PM if the competition tells us it will? We didn't expect everything to be done for us, just the things that they said they would do. Even then, the competition was still a good experience for us too.

Unfortunate that Texas and Truskool weren't able to party together afterwards. I can't wait for the videos. I heard from people that they thought Texas should have placed 1st and that you guys were hella entertaining! However, I must ask - you guys DO know who really won the NBA Finals last year, right?

Hell yeah homie - Born and raised in Minnesota - land of.... Kevin Garnett lol