Professional teams leveraging collegiate resources (and vice versa)

[nyc_bhangra_girl]

Hi BTF! I wanted to survey the circuit on the topic of: professional teams dominating resources of collegiate teams, and in return, collegiate teams benefitting unfairly from these relationships. For example, take an alliance like BU Bhangra and FAUJ, where FAUJ members have been dancing under the Boston University title. The teams competed jointly at BBC this year, under the name of BU Bhangra and won 3rd place (every single one of the boys were FAUJ-affiliated dancers and a few of the girls were also professional dancers, no longer college or BU students), under the name of BU. As a result of this win and many others, BU Bhangra is now able to go back to their school boasting placings and garnering more financial and social support, regardless of the fact that the majority of their dancers are not BU students or undergraduates; rather, the actual BU students who aspire to dance bhangra in their college careers have been sidelined to make room for this guised professional takeover by FAUJ. The ramifications of professional-collegiate alliances such as this are many-fold: 1. First, BU/FAUJ alliance is heading to 4 (possibly 5) competitions this year and taking away spots from other fully-collegiate teams who don't have older, coached, professional dancers in their audition videos. This is not to single this pair of teams out: I used to be a dancer in the New England area so the example I’ll give is BU/Fauj even though I know they’re not the only ones). All pairings like this have a similar relationship where professional teams dance in the collegiate circuit and mess up the honest rankings between purely collegiate teams. I suspect FCB and CMU may as well, correct me if I am wrong. 2. In addition, professional teams grossly benefit by the ability to exploit and receive money and other resources from their partner collegiate team's school via internal student group funding (for competition applications, vardiyan, props, etc.) whereas other professional teams get no benefits and must make such purchases from gig money or personal funds. 3. Lastly, and the part that I personally find the most unfair, is a matter of student stage time. There has been a lot of positive discourse on BTF, about wanting spread the love of bhangra to future generations, keeping a powerful and historic tradition alive in the minds and hearts of generations growing up away from India where this all began. Yet, the emergence of professional takeovers of collegiate teams bars honest undergraduates and students, who are seeking out teammates, a dance outlet, an opportunity to learn a dance style, or an avenue to showcase their innate talents and charisma on stage, from fully appreciating what it means to perform bhangra. Who are professional teams to say that they deserve resources over the students who have an honest right to them by virtue of their enrollment in colleges? Who are professional teams to walk into a collegiate team and prevent newer team members from adequate training and stage time? Teams only stay alive by the proper motivation and teaching of younger dancers, so why are we tolerating collegiate teams whose majority dancers are working adults who’ve been dancing for years and years, over promoting new talent to keep the circuit going? A couple suggestions to combat this (would love to start a discussion around this): 1) I suggest that competitions that are specifically for collegiate teams really enforce the fact that 80% of all dancing members should have a current valid college ID -- not one from another college that shows a graduation date of a few years back, but one from THAT team's college that shows the dancer is still attending that university. 2) Further, (and this is a harder thing to call for), it would be nice if a few competitions could compare lineups before releasing them so as to keep a single team from dominating and attending every competition, especially if that team is widely known to be a merger/coalition team, rather than one of independent operation. Any other suggestions, BTF? A final comment: This is not to say that every collegiate team ever must be super purely collegiate or else. I am sympathetic to the idea that many teams are often close with others, and we often rely on pull friends or known good dancers at the last minute to compete on our stages due to an unforeseen injury or just to get that 12th or 16th person to fill the formations. I am NOT trying to call out the teams that call upon just a handful of dancers in the set to come from teams outside of their own. The unfairness and dishonesty emerges the most when in fact the majority of a “collegiate team” is in fact comprised of outside dancers, seeking to gain from a university teams reputation and resources.

 

[nikhil95]

There are spaces like Blowout and Nashville for purely collegiate lineups, where they require you to send in photocopies of ID's, although honestly I don't know how stringently this is enforced (I'm pretty sure with an old college ID alumni could perform with previous collegiate teams). Most collegiate teams I know of often times go with people on their own teams before reaching out to nearby local teams, and some collegiate teams are more strict than others ex: CMU does not steal from FCB (I'm pretty sure) but FCB will take people from CMU for off season. FYI

 

[Sue Sylvester]

what_the_hell_did_i_just_read.jpg

 

[Mans]

First of all, what do you mean by "professional team". The way you seem to describe a "professional team" is similar to pro sports where there is an owner that pays team members. Independent teams are ones that are not associated with a college and they are in no way "professional". I was going to respond to each bullet point but your train of thought seems to be all over the place. What I will say is it is on each individual collegiate team to make sure that the majority of their members are from the respective college. If you feel like there is someone abusing power by taking money from the colleges that is something you need to take up with your own Associated Student (or similar organization) of your college. Judging from your post it seems to me you got some particular issue with one particular team, so maybe you should go and talk to them about it.

On another note if you got something to say why not use your main account instead of creating a brand new one to hide behind and talk shit. You are talking about having every competition verify that they are a college team by showing proof with ID. Maybe BTF needs to start verifying each person with a Drivers License that way we know who the ?s are

 

[UmerQureshi96]

aight so I can't speak to BU/FAUJ but I can speak about FCB/Pitt/CMU. I think your question is def warranted, mainly because I think not only you, but a lotta peeps in the circuit just aren't aware of how we actually work.

FCB is pretty much only Pitt students, at pretty much any given time during the year we have about 10-30 Pitt students either on our campus team or actively competing. At any given comp we have (except Bruin) the team is about 60-80% Pitt students. The team as a whole is like 90% Pitt students. Honestly, we could go to Blowout if we wanted to but we don't. So, I mean why wouldn't we get funding from the school? At Pitt, an organization needs to be 75% Pitt students to qualify as a student organization so I mean yeah we get some funding. We're not abusing any system.

In reference to "the actual BU students who aspire to dance bhangra in their college careers have been sidelined to make room for this guised professional takeover by FAUJ". I'm pretty sure they're probably training newer dancers in the background you just don't see so that they can eventually get on stage similar to FCB. Yeah sure we got some older heads like Mitra, Sid, etc that dance and take up some spots but we're also training many students to dance so that they can get good enough to get on stage. So sure, for the most part you won't see inexperienced dancers on stage with us, but that's usually because most dancers on FCB don't get on stage until their sophomore year or later because they gotta beat out older dudes to get on stage. In the mean time, they train at practice, on their own, and go to local campus gigs and paid gigs around the city. Obviously idk what BU is like, but I'm assuming it's somewhat similar.

Now to refute your points.
1) First and foremost don't call us professional teams, that's not what we are. We don't do this for a living. We ain't professional. Don't act like you can't beat us. UNC has beaten us twice. MBT and CMU just beat both MOB Chicago and SDS this past weekend. You can reach out to older teams/dancers for help ya know. Illini Bhangra reached out to @siddyp the year before they won blowout and got a shit ton of help and advice. There are dozens of older peeps in the circuit would love to watch your vids and give you pointers and help your team improve. And in terms of FCB/CMU. CMU only dances with FCB at Bruin/Clutch/Summer comps, CMU doesn't let FCB dancers dance at any comp. Other than that we don't share dancers during the year (except for @Kaashmoney at Burgh but dude's been dancing on FCB since he was in middle school so idk if that really counts)
2) I already refuted this earlier in terms of FCB but yeah @Mans is right. If you got an issue bring it up with your school funding board or whatever.
3) First and foremost, we're the only Bhangra team at Pitt, if we didn't exist they would get zero stage time. If you're referring to how we get spots over you, then sorry dawg but competition spots and stage time doesn't inherently belong to you. Train your dancers and get better. This year we've had 4-5 dancers dance for the first time, we train new dancers and get them stage experience too, we just happen to be pretty good at getting newer dancers ready. Yes we are advantaged that we have maintained a strong alumni network with all former FCB dancers so that our dancers always can reach out to former dancers asking for help, critiques, advice, etc. But you can do the same thing by reaching out to other teams and ask for help. Also, we are not mostly working adults, the median age of any given FCB roster at any given comp is like 19-20.

I don't mean to attack you nor am I trying to make you look dumb or anything, I think your questions are valid if you haven't been on an independent team and I appreciate how you respectfully brought up your points. This misconception is pretty widespread so I just wanted to just set some shit straight is all. If you got some other questions feel free to DM me.

 

[Sujatha Baskar]

I think everyone is eager to dance because we all clearly love it so we try to find any way to continue our experiences on the circuit. I don't think it's fair to put it on the category of "independent teams", rather it is the individual dancers who strive to create new opportunities for themselves you know?

Every competition can not require a percentage of collegiate students because that is grossly unfair to independent teams or just individuals who want to dance but are older/younger than 18-22 years. I think boards should be allowed to pick who they choose fit for their competitions. I know there are sooooo many competitions out there are always looking for Bhangra teams to be added to their line up, so I'm sure that a few teams are not taking up all the spots at competitions or "dominating the circuit". Like you said, if stage experience is what your goal is, then it shouldn't matter as to what competition you go it versus what competition other teams go to.

Also I think that if a team has several dancers who need training and experience to become stage ready, starting a B team is always the best way to go. I know that CMU has a campus team who get so much experience by performing at campus gigs and showcases. It's a good way to train, keep the excitement going, and honestly just have fun dancing. All i'm trying to say is that your problem is valid, but there are definitely other solutions to the problem rather than blaming other dancers.


P.S. Have you heard of a team called PBS @UmerQureshi96 ? Heard they wanted to go to Blowout a few years ago

 

[LiL JaTT]

Maybe BTF needs to start verifying each person with a Drivers License that way we know who the ?s are

If this happens I'm screwed lmao

 

[hardeep_singh]

If this happens I'm screwed lmao

sher ban ja putra, duniya to ni dari da

 

[Armaan]

For the size of the original post, it's not really a strong argument. Whether you'd like to call it an alliance, or not... it's a smart move.

Bhangra team members aren't treated like employees where you sign a non-compete, and neither are they treated like sports players where they can only be signed to one team. Let's assume there was more transparency from the start about dancer overlaps on all teams. If people knew in advance, I doubt it would be that big of a deal.

To your point of student stage time... students are not ENTITLED to time on stage. NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO STAGE TIME. This generation of dancers think that just because they made the team, they should be on the dancing roster. Work on your craft, battle your own team members, and fight for that spot. This especially goes for freshmen. When it comes to competitions, everyone has different leadership styles. For comps, leadership has one question: Who is currently competition ready? When you realize you don't have enough competition ready dancers, you ask others.

Seems like you felt targetted negatively here and have a deeply rooted issue with BU/FAUJ. Also feels like there's a lot of contradiction in this story, assuming that if you had had a spot in this lineup/situation none of this would have been brought up.

From what I gather, some BU dancers were accepted into FAUJ, improved and became some dope creative dancers, and then brought that knowledge and experience back with them to BU. When it came time for BBC, those who made the cut, made the cut. The blank spaces were filled by others. Focus on being the best dancer you can be, so you can compete to have one of these spots.

"The unfairness and dishonesty emerges the most when in fact the majority of a “collegiate team” is in fact comprised of outside dancers, seeking to gain from a university teams reputation and resources."

Sidenote: Strong words... I don't think anyone was dishonest ??‍


Edit: Also competitions have full access to rosters. If a comp is not a "collegiate" competition, then why would they care that a team has dancers from one place or not?

 

[Sue Sylvester]

Jinkies! You caught us!



And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

 

[Sue Sylvester]

To be honest, I've never even heard of this so-called "Boston University". Was probably just some low level coffee boy. Had nothing to do with our team. NO COLLUSION! YOU'RE THE COLLUSION! Space FAUJ all the covfefe

 

[newyorkguy]

This is not to single this pair of teams out: I used to be a dancer in the New England area so...

Do you mean Boston? Because noone calls it New England except for the New England Patriots ??

 

[yomamajama]

Your mad because college teams actually want to compete?

 

[IAmCaptainMorgan]

Armaan said pretty much everything I was thinking.

I graduated from BU Bhangra 6 years ago and last competed with my FAUJ comrades in 2015. Although this anonymous post mentioned these teams 16 times, nowhere did it mention that the current dancers put in hard work and executed an entertaining set! Congrats to them and all the teams that put in work.

I hear the pain and frustration in the original post, and honestly this reminds me part of why I stopped competing after 7 years. I still love Bhangra and dance in general, but to me, there is a certain level of toxic energy in the sole pursuit for placings. Especially when someone else's success can't be celebrated because you feel it held you or others back in some way. Maybe it's just the way us Desi folks are with anything that involves rankings/competition & perceived 'fairness.' At the end of the day dance is art, and there are a million reasons and ways to dance, other than just for the pursuit of trophies. There are a lot of platforms to dance and grow if you love the art.

Retired person's unsolicited advice? Of course!

For comps:

• Everyone cares about placings, so more transparency in the judging process/results is always a good thing.
• Art is subjective and it is clear that different judges/viewers will come up with different placings when it just comes down to a 1, 2, 3. Furthermore, it is very difficult to judge all the different criteria at once. Example, very few people can go back and remember all the formations a team hit in a single performance, forget about 8-12 in a row.
  • I'm a fan of other judging processes like what Idols used to do. (judges focus on one criteria + an overall impression score for every team)
  • Give more awards than just 1, 2, 3. Best formations, most intricate choreography, etc.

For teams: Set goals outside of just placing/competing. If those are your only team goals, you can work hard and still end up completely disappointed because of things outside your control. What will you care about 10 years from now?

To the original poster. As highlighted as others, some of your language felt off base and made some more serious accusations. Still think it was a fine discussion to bring up and clearly triggered me enough to find my BTF password lol. ???

Have fun ya'll,
- Jake