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Re: Desi Dhamaka Updates
- Thread starter ban3rg
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I keep hearing this a lot from members of your team. Which competitions did you guys go to so far this year? I'm just point out that you guys keep telling us that you've beaten some well-known teams (it seems like a theme in your posts), but Google nor Youtube nor DDT nor BTF gives insight on these competitions you've been to. Care to enlighten us?sumeetj said:
kinnell your so right lol i was gona make this same post cuz justin virks been sayin it, and i never heard of ecu before. like on the vibc thread, i actually didnt like how that post was made bout ecu not getting in and then sayin weve been some of the more qualified teams out there we shoulda gotten in yada yada. im like wat? please do tell so im not so confused anymore..kinnell said:I keep hearing this a lot from members of your team. Which competitions did you guys go to so far this year? I'm just point out that you guys keep telling us that you've beaten some well-known teams (it seems like a theme in your posts), but Google nor Youtube nor DDT nor BTF gives insight on these competitions you've been to. Care to enlighten us?sumeetj said:
btw this isnt hatin on ecu, im just curious, as is kinnell is id imagine
My intentions are not to hate. You asked to be called out, so I'm callin' out. Just my honest opinion, just because you beat a team at one competition doesn't necessarily mean you have a better chance than them to get into other competition.jvirk said:
jvirk said:
jvirk said:
jvirk said:
The reason why it seems TZ, myself and others here on BTF remember your team saying this over and over again is because no one else on other teams seem to be coming out and saying "we've beaten some well known teams". Just an observation perhaps.sumeetj said:
Just to start things off, I'm not with any team, and am not even in the bhangra scene anymore, and I was at this competition last year to check it out. This is my first time at the forum and was just surfing the different posts and saw this one.
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Do you know how many competition organizers would LOVE to have some of these "rejected" teams in their line-up? You say that you want to eventually be a top competition, but totally reject the possibility of that even happening in the first place (However, I'm sure that you'll get a lot of support with this "unique" idea of "giving everyone a chance" from any bhangra fans in the socialist party)!! This is like you going through dental/medical/law school etc, and when you get out, your dad just hands you his practice which is already built up and ready to go, and without you even needing to build a client base. But instead, you choose to turn it down and start from scratch and struggle for a few years to build your own...would many people really do that? Probably not.
Additionally, this comp already has a bad/weak rep, so you need to make a HUGE comeback to revive it, and this was your chance. You had guys with the right connections to make this happen and you blew it. "Sulmoney" is ligit and is comparable to Kitchen Nightmare's Gordon Ramsey in the bhangra scene, and it sounds like you guys completely rejected his main ideas (I know, kind of a funny comparison, but true). It's great to have a "unique" vision of having a low/mid-range competition, but the logistics of it just don't make any sense. Who decides who's a low/mid/high caliber team? The selection process for who's going to be in competitions is already technically subjective, and so only picking the best teams narrows down the selection process and increases the overall objectivity of it. As people have already pointed out, if your vision is to have a "mediocre" competition, why would you intentionally invite or accept any high caliber teams at all? For hype/ticket sales? That's pretty unfair to the other "mediocre" teams (it's also somewhat insulting along with bad advertising to present a majority of your competitors as "weak/mediocre").
Also, if you wanted a mediocre competition, you should have left the organizers out that had these connections to good teams in the first place, and worked your best to advertise this event to as many teams as possible. This way, top teams wouldn't have seen this competition as something worth going to due to a lack of credibility/riskiness in its young age, and so you would have had the lower/middle range teams that you wanted in the first place fighting for spots. Yes, there is a possibility that some high caliber teams from the surrounding area would have come for the easy money, but for the most part, it would have been the same type of teams from the past competitions. Most teams start out with no reputation at all, but have to build up to it.
You have to place at a lot of the "mediocre" competitions to be deemed worthy to get into a top competition as a low ranking team. There are many low/mid ranking competitions that just aren't good enough yet to become a top competition, mainly because they can't attract top teams. What you're trying to do isn't special...in fact, it's kind of an oxymoron to be the "best mediocre" competition. The only thing that you guys needed to change was the judging, and possibly the competition structure. In the past, you've had "celebrity" judges there that had absolutely no clue about Indian culture or dancing. Also, you've put bhangra/raas/fusion teams against each other. There are a lot of competitions that do this, and this never really makes sense as they're all different styles of dancing. The other thing that needs to change, and I hope does, is the "crowd participation" factor in the judging. Do you really expect teams from Boston, for example, to bring their whole crew to Albany for a competition? That's ridiculous, and is surely the reason why the home team almost always wins this competition.
For example, last year I believe the competition was at Siena, and the Siena team actually ended up winning. There weren't many good teams there to begin with, but there was no way they should have gotten first place (probably third), and a lot of people knew that. I was surprised when the only Sikh/Punjabi judge that was there told them that their dance "brought him back to his days in Punjab." Their moves had no resemblance to bhangra moves (I think at one point they were doing cart-wheels and splits??), the guys didn't have real pughs, were dancing bhangra to bollywood, etc. It was a disaster. The judges were probably all afraid that if they made any slightly negative critical comments that they'd get booed out of the gymnasium that the competition was being held in by the 30 rowdy Siena students in the front rows. It was a joke, and I hope this changes. You can check out the Siena vid on youtube if you're interested, and I believe it shows the judges' comments also.
The way you have this set up so far really isn't a true competition, but a "controlled competition." There really isn't any competition evident, it's like the government putting price controls on products so demand doesn't make them too expensive, you're purposely putting low, mediocre, and high caliber teams in the same competition....hmmmm, I wonder who's going to win/has the best chance of winning? Next year when you advertise for this, you should include on the website and subject heading of emails: "This competition is for low/mediocre teams, so if you think that you're a top team, please don't apply. We'll be interested in top teams in a few years once we look to advancing the caliber of Desi Dhamaka." This way maybe you'll be able to eliminate disappointing any good teams that won't make it into the competition due to other, mediocre teams getting in ahead of them. And if you have solid judging, there really isn't much suspense as to who's going to be the winner of this competition. Another option, to make sure that the judging is fair, is have three different categories of placings that include "low, mediocre, and high" caliber teams. Besides, it looks like you guys have enough teams to make more winner categories anyways. This is insulting, you say? Don't worry, by this point 80% of the teams will have already gotten used to the fact that they've been selected to compete because they're bad/mediocre in the first place. In the long run, Desi Dhamaka is going to have branded itself as being a competition for "low and mediocre" teams, and so you're going to have a really hard time getting top teams to even want to participate unless you really raise the financial rewards (which will be hard to do as you'll have a hard time getting a large crowd wanting to come and watch a bunch of low/mid-caliber teams...maybe you can get a few hundred fans, but no where even close to 1,000).
In short, if your goal is to eventually have a high caliber competition, you shouldn't reject top teams. There's no way that after rejecting teams such as VCU for example, and then accepting teams that clearly aren't as good, that they'll want to come back next year. That's not a real competition and it's a slap in the face to VCU and other top teams, even if they tell you that they're "cool" with it and the idea (no team would be). I have no connections to any of these teams and don't care who wins, but when I read this, I just couldn't understand why anyone would want to reject an opportunity for a great competition. It's just baffling. However, for the sake of the teams, I hope things go well and that they have a great experience...but I really have no idea how that's possible. I wish you guys the best of luck on your "vision."
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Do you know how many competition organizers would LOVE to have some of these "rejected" teams in their line-up? You say that you want to eventually be a top competition, but totally reject the possibility of that even happening in the first place (However, I'm sure that you'll get a lot of support with this "unique" idea of "giving everyone a chance" from any bhangra fans in the socialist party)!! This is like you going through dental/medical/law school etc, and when you get out, your dad just hands you his practice which is already built up and ready to go, and without you even needing to build a client base. But instead, you choose to turn it down and start from scratch and struggle for a few years to build your own...would many people really do that? Probably not.
Additionally, this comp already has a bad/weak rep, so you need to make a HUGE comeback to revive it, and this was your chance. You had guys with the right connections to make this happen and you blew it. "Sulmoney" is ligit and is comparable to Kitchen Nightmare's Gordon Ramsey in the bhangra scene, and it sounds like you guys completely rejected his main ideas (I know, kind of a funny comparison, but true). It's great to have a "unique" vision of having a low/mid-range competition, but the logistics of it just don't make any sense. Who decides who's a low/mid/high caliber team? The selection process for who's going to be in competitions is already technically subjective, and so only picking the best teams narrows down the selection process and increases the overall objectivity of it. As people have already pointed out, if your vision is to have a "mediocre" competition, why would you intentionally invite or accept any high caliber teams at all? For hype/ticket sales? That's pretty unfair to the other "mediocre" teams (it's also somewhat insulting along with bad advertising to present a majority of your competitors as "weak/mediocre").
Also, if you wanted a mediocre competition, you should have left the organizers out that had these connections to good teams in the first place, and worked your best to advertise this event to as many teams as possible. This way, top teams wouldn't have seen this competition as something worth going to due to a lack of credibility/riskiness in its young age, and so you would have had the lower/middle range teams that you wanted in the first place fighting for spots. Yes, there is a possibility that some high caliber teams from the surrounding area would have come for the easy money, but for the most part, it would have been the same type of teams from the past competitions. Most teams start out with no reputation at all, but have to build up to it.
You have to place at a lot of the "mediocre" competitions to be deemed worthy to get into a top competition as a low ranking team. There are many low/mid ranking competitions that just aren't good enough yet to become a top competition, mainly because they can't attract top teams. What you're trying to do isn't special...in fact, it's kind of an oxymoron to be the "best mediocre" competition. The only thing that you guys needed to change was the judging, and possibly the competition structure. In the past, you've had "celebrity" judges there that had absolutely no clue about Indian culture or dancing. Also, you've put bhangra/raas/fusion teams against each other. There are a lot of competitions that do this, and this never really makes sense as they're all different styles of dancing. The other thing that needs to change, and I hope does, is the "crowd participation" factor in the judging. Do you really expect teams from Boston, for example, to bring their whole crew to Albany for a competition? That's ridiculous, and is surely the reason why the home team almost always wins this competition.
For example, last year I believe the competition was at Siena, and the Siena team actually ended up winning. There weren't many good teams there to begin with, but there was no way they should have gotten first place (probably third), and a lot of people knew that. I was surprised when the only Sikh/Punjabi judge that was there told them that their dance "brought him back to his days in Punjab." Their moves had no resemblance to bhangra moves (I think at one point they were doing cart-wheels and splits??), the guys didn't have real pughs, were dancing bhangra to bollywood, etc. It was a disaster. The judges were probably all afraid that if they made any slightly negative critical comments that they'd get booed out of the gymnasium that the competition was being held in by the 30 rowdy Siena students in the front rows. It was a joke, and I hope this changes. You can check out the Siena vid on youtube if you're interested, and I believe it shows the judges' comments also.
The way you have this set up so far really isn't a true competition, but a "controlled competition." There really isn't any competition evident, it's like the government putting price controls on products so demand doesn't make them too expensive, you're purposely putting low, mediocre, and high caliber teams in the same competition....hmmmm, I wonder who's going to win/has the best chance of winning? Next year when you advertise for this, you should include on the website and subject heading of emails: "This competition is for low/mediocre teams, so if you think that you're a top team, please don't apply. We'll be interested in top teams in a few years once we look to advancing the caliber of Desi Dhamaka." This way maybe you'll be able to eliminate disappointing any good teams that won't make it into the competition due to other, mediocre teams getting in ahead of them. And if you have solid judging, there really isn't much suspense as to who's going to be the winner of this competition. Another option, to make sure that the judging is fair, is have three different categories of placings that include "low, mediocre, and high" caliber teams. Besides, it looks like you guys have enough teams to make more winner categories anyways. This is insulting, you say? Don't worry, by this point 80% of the teams will have already gotten used to the fact that they've been selected to compete because they're bad/mediocre in the first place. In the long run, Desi Dhamaka is going to have branded itself as being a competition for "low and mediocre" teams, and so you're going to have a really hard time getting top teams to even want to participate unless you really raise the financial rewards (which will be hard to do as you'll have a hard time getting a large crowd wanting to come and watch a bunch of low/mid-caliber teams...maybe you can get a few hundred fans, but no where even close to 1,000).
In short, if your goal is to eventually have a high caliber competition, you shouldn't reject top teams. There's no way that after rejecting teams such as VCU for example, and then accepting teams that clearly aren't as good, that they'll want to come back next year. That's not a real competition and it's a slap in the face to VCU and other top teams, even if they tell you that they're "cool" with it and the idea (no team would be). I have no connections to any of these teams and don't care who wins, but when I read this, I just couldn't understand why anyone would want to reject an opportunity for a great competition. It's just baffling. However, for the sake of the teams, I hope things go well and that they have a great experience...but I really have no idea how that's possible. I wish you guys the best of luck on your "vision."
Armaan
Active Member
- Messages
- 423
arite people are legit analyzing the situation wayyyyy too much. everyone needs to just chill and let things flow. Its their competition, let them run it the way they want to. They're testing a new method out and right now no one knows whether its gonna be amazing, horrible, or simply decent. Whatever happened, let it go, its over with. And as for all this discussion about VCU and all, I love VCU's team like no other. They're THE team I pretty much look up to. I won't be surprised if i'm right when I say that you guys are making a bigger deal about VCU not getting in than the VCU team themselves. They're probably already over it and have moved on. They are a strong mature team that has already placed in multiple competitions (Burgh, BBC). They are an incredible team and are bound to get accepted into other comps for this year.
To the bashers: Let it go, whats done is done. Find something else to bash. Day after day since the lineup was posted theres been constant crap being said. This shit should be done by now.
To Desi Dhamaka: Good luck with the competition and I hope everything runs smoothly. You guys are testing a new method and its good you're standing by it.
To sum it up...cut the crap and move on, even after the updated lineup is posted (hopefully soon)
Note to moderator: We might as well split up most of this thread into off-topic: Desi Dhamaka Drama
To the bashers: Let it go, whats done is done. Find something else to bash. Day after day since the lineup was posted theres been constant crap being said. This shit should be done by now.
To Desi Dhamaka: Good luck with the competition and I hope everything runs smoothly. You guys are testing a new method and its good you're standing by it.
To sum it up...cut the crap and move on, even after the updated lineup is posted (hopefully soon)
Note to moderator: We might as well split up most of this thread into off-topic: Desi Dhamaka Drama
I'm pretty sure VCU doesnt give a flying monkeys balls about being left out, because honestly it would be a waste of time for VCU to go to this comp and take home first easily... They're probably focused on the legit comps still out there... It's just a little surprising that they wanted "one or two top tier" teams yet somehow managed to decline admittance to VCU when they're clearly the best team that applied... FAIL
VCU was just used as an example...I could have used any of the top teams that didn't make it. I guess it's right to say that they're trying a new method, one that strives to be mediocre. Unfortunately because of this that's all the competition will end up being, mediocre, and there's nothing new about that. Hopefully there wasn't a registration fee...that would be really annoying.
Desi Dhamaka
Desi Dhamaka, Bhangra Allstars, Fusion Faceoff...
- Messages
- 233
The lineup is almost all finalized...Sunday I will post the final lineup..as of right now...Here it is
The List is as follows:
1. Anakh E Gabroo
2. Anakh Punjab Di
3. Binghamton Bhangra
4. CMU Chak De Bhangra
5. ECU Muqabla
6. Gator Bhangra
7. GMU Bhangra
8. Northeastern Bhangra
9. Rochester Bhangra
10. Siena Bhangra
11. NC State Bhangra
12. The Bhangra Union
13. UVA di Shaan
14. Virsa: Our Tradition
15. Boston Bhangra
The List is as follows:
1. Anakh E Gabroo
2. Anakh Punjab Di
3. Binghamton Bhangra
4. CMU Chak De Bhangra
5. ECU Muqabla
6. Gator Bhangra
7. GMU Bhangra
8. Northeastern Bhangra
9. Rochester Bhangra
10. Siena Bhangra
11. NC State Bhangra
12. The Bhangra Union
13. UVA di Shaan
14. Virsa: Our Tradition
15. Boston Bhangra