First Class Bhangra @ Bruin Bhangra 20th Anniversary

[saagarm]

Kiddhaan BTF,

Here is the link to our Bruin Bhangra 20th Anniversary video and mix!! Shoutout to Harjot and his engagement as well as Teg Hans, Dr. Srimix, KashmoneyBansal and Ram Mahaajohpaeoflingham for creating such a hot mix.

Jodis:
RED – SqUmer Qureshi, Saagpreet Menon
BLACK – Azie “Dad” Dhingra, Kashmoney Bansal
DARK BLUE – Mitra “MIT PEE” Patel, Sahil Peepa-Dadoo
PURPLE – Dharvinder Patwa, Luvreet “Jhoomer God” Sangha
ORANGE – Chandramouli Swaminathan Rathnam, Ramakrishnan “I Made Up a Middle Name for the Syllables” Mahalingam
YELLOW – Rushil “Sucks” Shah, Suprothicc Debnath
DARK GREEN – ChefboyarJiggy Saraiya, HarDikDik Singh
LIGHT GREEN – Rhea “Priya” Prabhu, Jeminiah “Jemy” Varghese
PINK – Puneet “Puna” Gill, Tanya “Tanyeezy” Talwar
FEROZI – SujathaFlocka Baskar, Nikita “Queso” Kesav

Somehow we always have a birthday on a summer competition, so shoutout to Jemy Varghese for turning 19 and celebrating her birthday and first performance on stage with us!

Shoutouts and Thank You’s:
· Shoutout to Saira, Guransh and the other members of Bruin Bhangra’s board for hosting a wonderful competition. From the dope hotel and pool to running around making sure teams had what they needed, can’t thank the board enough!
· Gagan Grewal, thank you so much for your tireless running around and helping us get all of our props stuff done last minute! Super helpful and never once complained even though we a bunch of divas!
· We cannot thank everyone who came to Bruin on our roster who stayed up through the nights helping us settle our gimmicks, build our cake and make the banners shown at the end of our performance. You guys literally kept our performance at its peak with all of your hard work and dedication. Kaveen Singh, Aishwarya Gaje, Priyanka Ram, Sahab Rover, Simmi Gill, Rakhi Brahmbhatt, Sukhi Jhaj, Dikky Singh, Kash Bansal and the other countless people who came helped so much.
· Tejasvir Singh Rekhi, the man who spends $56 at taco bell, saved some of that money made a trip to LA and played dhol for us, we cannot explain how much you mean to us.
· Nappy and his cousin for tying, tucking, and shaping some beautiful pagghan and some round turle.
· Romesh Dresses in India for creating our vardiyaan in such little amount of time!
· Congratulations to Shaan Punjab Dee on their 1st Place, and DRP and Bhangra Knightz on their tie for 3rd Place!
Shoutout to Luv for making some of the most insane formations ever. It was an amazing experience dancing with you and learning from you
· Shoutout to all of our dancers who worked through our constant changes in choreo formations and had to deal with us and all of the intowners who filled spots and helped us visualize our set <3
Shoutout to Rohan Bansal and Permveer Longia for helping us out immensely running logistics and getting us anything we could have needed during the weekend
· Finally, shoutout to Teg Hans, Dr. Srimix, Kashmoney, and First Class Beats for creating, drafting and putting together our entire mix, definitely something we can bump for a while.

Things to Look for:
· The beautiful birthday cake that we worked for hours on, seen for approx. 1.5 seconds.
· Light up khunde!!! That didn’t light up oopsie
· Nikki’s wonderful cape

As a team transitioning to a new set of leaders, Rishaan Sharma, Umer Qureshi and I (Saagar Menon), we aimed to do something different with this set, while still implementing the First Class style. Please let us know with comments what you thought about our set, what you did and didn’t like, we really enjoy getting feedback and listening to what people think!

 

[sumeetj]

you would have won if I danced

 

[Amrit Singh]

From what I've seen, a big critique that you guys have consistently gotten the past few years is that your sets all look too similar and are becoming predictable. Glad to see that you're trying something different. Theme wise, I liked the Alexa concept. It disrupted the flow of your set in some places (the happy birthday thing didn't really hit for me), but I can appreciate the creativity of the idea. In terms of formations, it was nice to see you spread out your dancer rotation more. In a lot of previous first class sets, there's 3 or 4 jodis that take up the majority of the drops while the other jodis are given the filler choreo. I felt like everyone got their moments in this set and no one jodi dominated all the front time.

This being said, I think the set had its weaknesses too. I won't comment on individual execution mistakes or cleanliness because I don't think it does any good to point out stuff that you guys are probably aware of and have made note of (however, no one dancer stuck out in a bad way which was good to see). The 3 girl jodis looked a bit out of place to me. The way the set started, it made me think that they would be more highlighted throughout the set and while they did have their own moments (as I mentioned earlier), it just looked a bit confused when they weren't placed as strategically. I think if you choose to do something similar in future sets, it may be better to do a conventional coed structure with half girls and half guys. The biggest thing I found off putting about your set was that a lot of the drops and choreo didn't make sense and seemed like they had buildups that lead nowhere. The happy birthday thing that I mentioned earlier is one example, just kind of seemed thrown in there for the sake of it. Other places where I had similar sentiments were khunda chaal, dhamaal, first half of ending, and the drop for the Robin Hood song in saaps.

Overall, solid performance and congrats on the placing. It's cool to see first class moving in a different direction while trying to stay true to their style and I look forward to seeing more in the future.

 

[sahab]

I did not feel the impact of going 20 like I did in 2016. I would much rather see a strong 12 or 16 vs. trying to relive that same impact.

On that note, You were easily the second best dancing team of the night, but what made you second best was the dillution of going 20. Watered down. Think, with more people there’s an increased risk of mistakes/mishaps.

Never thought i would hear kajarara in a Bhangra set. It was well choreographed. The green girl on the right killed it. She looked like she was having the time of her life on stage.

Jhoomer was smooth.

Ending. Holy shit lol. What bpm is that at? 105. Regardless, y’all murked it.

Having the girls on stage could have been played up much more. Think the excitement brought upon by jvd vs. the feeling of excitement brought by you guys. Two different levels. It felt fleeting and forced.

The risk with all the lights and the Birthday cake was not worth the reward. But shout out to the those he worked so hard to build the cake

Biggest theme and lessons learned from this performance is to check risk vs. reward

 

[Varan Rakhra]

Good job boys! You really tried bringing the whole Bruin vibe in this set. If the cake, lighting was spot on- who knows we might be having a different conversation. I agree with some points already brought up and I dont think going 20 hurt you as much as going 14 guys and 6 girls.. That combo just looked odd on stage and you lose unity.(going 20 guys or 10 and 10 would of looked better) I know teams in the past have gone 10 and 2 and it worked and sometimes it doesn't but in your case it didn't work out. The formations were ILL but having that weird combo of dancers took away its full potential. The happy birthday pause and Jhoomer pause brought your flow down completely. (Didn't add anything by having not everyone dance) Alexa idea I think was fitting to your set but could of been used in a different way ie (Alexa what does Mirza mean, Alexa Explain Bhangra, Alexa who were the past winners of Bruin and whose going to win today) Ending was hype and you guys did bring the most difficult routine to dance to but that doesn't mean its the best routine of the night as you know. Dancer wise you have some good talent but a good majority lack stage presence that comes to play when scores are tight. Overall man good job! You guys tried something new and brought a dope performance. Keep up the good work!