Jabar, do you have any idea who the person was "in charge" of directing that? Des Raj (Garib Dass's son) has been in Canada for over the past year+, and I wonder if maybe he was involved, since it is a specific "school" of people that tend to make those. Yes, these two are Bhag Singh compositions. Like I said (sorry to repeat, I'm just thinking about it more myself!), they must have gotten bored with bhangra all the time. Keep in mind that bhangra in India is like one routine that just keeps getting honed by individual artists, and developed (though by late 80s most development had happened), but it's not like you try to make all these exciting changes in routine from performance to performance. You just drill the routine, usually the same one every time, and then bang it out whenever someone says they need bhangra to end their event. I imagine these artists would have been frustrated by not being able to do something with a little more "breathing room," poetry, and sensitivity. The dholis of Chandigarh are mostly Bazigars, and they have a drama background. Their cultural "vibe" is to be a bit more "sensitive" (not sure if that means anything, but contrast it with stereotypical "Jatt" vibe). This may be reading slightly too far into it, but they also have more of a gender balance and comfortable with the female side of things in the mix. The men's dance from their homeland is jhummar, more graceful with "feminine" motions, singing love songs (i.e not "putt Jattan de" songs). I almost feel like bhangra (as it had evolved on stage) was kind of a college football team thing with garlands instead of Gatorade...if not verging on Bro territory...and some personalities in Punjabi society (to state the obvious?) just aren't into it. It's kind of too bad it has dominated so much of the "market share"...which is one reason why jhummar, sammi, men's giddha were revived, but that's another story.
Garib Dass seemed keen on this "Vanjara" thing, and I understood it to be because the vanjara/"Gypsy" figure was attractive to him -- his people being somewhat related to Banjaras and that lifestyle. One time he prepared a performance of it with like 100-200 performers on a huge field (square). They performed it simultaneously in all 4 directions!
We did "Dhola ve Dhola" w/ Garib Dass in California in 2003. He worked the sequence in as part of a mixed dance. It's just done to a kahirva dhol rhythm, little steps, and pantomimes of the lyrics as pairs of male-female interact. Nothing to write home about, kind of a filler for dancers who are not very fit!
