Rochester Bhangra @ ADZ and Boiler 2014

[shruti]

Hi all!


Here are our videos and our mixes from ADZ and Boiler of this year. We had a pretty big turnover from last year, as well as numerous complications with injuries, etc. and couldn't be prouder of our newbies for stepping up. Comments and critiques would be greatly appreciated, feel free to add to the thread or PM me!


ADZ (2nd place) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2crLlUKFSR0
Dancers
Red - Shruti Nayar & Eduardo Quiñonez
Yellow - Lily Kamalyan & Brian Chang
Blue - Abhiniti Mittal & Nealansh Gupta
Purple - Rebecca Van Dyke & Sameer Shamsie
Green - Katie Harvey & Rishi Sharma


Boiler - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cIwJyPV28
Dancers
Red - Jessica Rose & Eduardo Quiñonez
Yellow - Lily Kamalyan & Pooja Patel
Blue - Abhiniti Mittal & Nealansh Gupta
Purple - Rebecca Van Dyke & Sameer Shamsie
Green - Katie Harvey & Rishi Sharma

Shout out to our liasons at ADZ, Leema, Gaurav, and Anuja, and our liasons at Boiler, Raghu and Adriana. A huge thank you to Neel Toor (ADZ), and Seema Mistry/Neal Patel (Boiler), who made the competitions as amazing as they were. Both competitions were exceptionally well-run, and were an overall great experience. Thanks to DJ Preet who helped us along with our mixes, and much love to our seniors dancing their last competition with Rochester Bhangra: Pooja Patel, Eduardo Quiñonez, and Abhiniti Mittal. We'll miss you!

 

[SGupta7]

[SIZE=small]Watched your boiler set. Liked a lot of your ideas, but i felt that the way they were executed left something to be desired. For example, the jugni reveal of your chimta players could have been way more creative. A more creative idea along with a build up in the mix could have set the stage for the reveal nicely. Jhummar/lehriyaan pick up were cool, but doing both of them, especially considering how slow they were, felt a little boring/repetitive. [/SIZE][/size][SIZE=small]

Choreo wasn't boring, but it wasn't anything super interesting either. You were clean, which is always nice to see. But the speed of the set felt pretty slow and since the set was only 6 minutes long I felt that you could have gone a little faster. Or at the very least been a little more creative with your choreo. I also noticed that there were multiple points in the set where dancers were standing, doing nothing. no shoulder bounce even. For example, blue jodi is standing in the back before saaps start doing nothing, dancers are standing when you toss the saap back up in the air, during jhummar pick up. I personally don't like to see dancers just standing. At the very least bounce your shoulders, interact with your jodi/audience.


I liked all of your formations for the most part, I thought stage movement was the best aspect of your set.


Mix sounded like songs were cut and paste in GarageBand. No transitions, no effects. A good mix can go a long way.


Lastly, the stage just looked really empty with only 8 dancers. I saw that you've had injuries and young dancers filling in, but even when your two chimta players came in the formations/choreo hit so much harder.


I know that's a lot of critiques haha but your dancers are all solid, which is the toughest part. Fixing up some of the small things and adding some creativity/entertainment value could bring a lot to your set. Good luck in the future! [/SIZE]

 

[shruti]

Thank you so much! I appreciate the feedback. A lot of what you said are critiques that we have gotten in the past, as well as from the judges of these two competitions. I guess a question I have now/have had for a while is, what exactly pushes sets over the edge? What is that "X" factor, and how do you find it? Obviously there isn't a specific answer that works for all teams, but it's something our team has grappled with; things that we thought hit hard while choreographing, didn't elicit as much of a response as we had hoped. Some teams capitalize on cleanliness, and that's how they win their competitions. Others have extremely original choreography and/or add in a fair amount of gimmicks, but don't look as clean, relatively speaking. I understand that different things work for different teams, but finding that certain something, and having it resonate with the majority is something we've struggled with. Do you have any advice on how to find it?

 

[sammyk]

Hey great performances! I agree with many of the comments Shawn already mentioned but I wanted to expand on a few of them.


There weren't many changes between sets, and I think you can improve on harder hitting choreography. I noticed a few times that you have people doing different steps a lot, but don't miss out on the chance to have a full team executing hard hitting choreography in sync. It really makes an impact. I definitely think your finale was better at Boiler in comparison to ADZ. Formation movement and choreography hit well for me. Also, this is my personal opinion, but you should milk the chance to use instrumentalists. I love those gimmicks, but I felt like setup for your jugni and the length was too short. It just flew by, though I think it could hit hard. Tweaking the choreography before the bass drop could contribute to the reveal, and maybe add more breakdown choreography as well.


Overall, the cleanliness and energy of your dancers was fun to watch. Shoutout to the yellow jodi girl and red jodi guy, killed it.


To answer your question about X-Factor: there is no set formula that can be applied to every team as you already know. And honestly, every team interprets it differently. You can attach a theme for the team (i.e. FAUJ), you can be really gimmick-based (i.e. Empire), or you can take the common route which is to create cool choreography and formations with a dope mix and high energy. I would advise definitely taking a hard look at your team. Seek talents that you may not have thought about that could play a role in unique gimmicks or choreography. At CMU, we have a couple of girls with some gymnastics experience and we added cartwheels to our set. Take each others strengths and tailor your set to show them off. In the end, you are putting on a performance, and if you think that will blow the audience away, then you can find a way to embed it into your set. I also think stunts add a good chunk of entertainment value if executed well.


I hope that was a little bit of an answer to your question. Great job again and good luck with your future comps!

 

[smehta313]

In regards to ADZ:
The beginning looked like a fun start and the saap segment was pretty entertaining. However, the amount the shikke was actually played is very low in comparison to a typical routine. If that’s the case, I suggest making sure all extensions are simply that, extended (fully). Girls on this team struggled through the early phases of the routine with the prop.


Choreo needs more of a punch, on top of certain ideas needing to be exaggerated or highlighted better (e.g. saap toss between girl and guy). The ideas are there, all that's needed now is powerful execution.


Jhoomer was different, I personally liked it, but it also comes off as an obvious rest in the set. If each ripple effect was more dynamic, there may be a stronger response to follow. In general, ripple effects seemed popular throughout the set. Once is cool, but anymore can take away from your routine. I did enjoy the mela scene sequence favorably though, where the two khunde carriers come towards the front of the diagonal. (by ripple effect I mean, dancer a does something, dancer b does something after, etc. Not sure if we have different terminology for it on the circuit or specifically in this forum).


I’m not sure on how to feel about the chimpta dancers, especially when they aren’t using chimpta and become a part of your routine like they did at the end. I understand that formations with 10 are much harder to deal with than that of 8, but regardless, you guys did a great job at filling the stage.
In general, some of the transitions in your mix seemed a little rough as well as the EQ’ing of the mix. I don’t have much knowledge in this area, but from the little I do, this would be my take.


The team has come a long way since last year though, and I’m happy for the success of the team at ADZ. Hope it continues heading into the 2014-2015 school year

Last 2 comments
· Eddy is a sick dancer. Holy shit, good stuff.
· Shruti ripped the ending

 

[mafzal]

I'm getting the "this topic is more than 30 days old!" warning but will comment anyway =) I watched the Boiler video and really enjoyed it.

+ Absolutely loved jhummar
+ Overall some very strong dancing/execution
+ I think you did well working with an 8 man set, and I like how you brought it in the instrumentalists to fill up the stage since they can dance