Start Commenting on Videos Please!

[siddyp]

What's up BTF!


I'd really like to see folks start doing public commenting/critiques again. It used to happen a ton. And imo, it definitely helped take bhangra to a new level, and encouraged people like myself to get more into the dance/circuit. Even if it's a simple "I really enjoyed that", it's better than not commenting at all.


I get that people would rather send things through PM or FB and that's fine. But please leave comments/critiques on videos on the forum.


I'm sure more people share this sentiment. And if you do, let us know by starting to comment/critique.


To Teams: Do post your vids as soon as you can. You never know what kind of critique/comment may get posted that could be a missing element to take you to the next level.


People may post comments/critiques that you completely disagree with, but whatever. You have your vision for your team and continue on that path if you wish. The people that take the time to actually post something, want to see you get better and see you succeed. And I'll repeat:


You never know what kind of critique/comment may get posted that could be a missing element to take you to the next level.


Much love!

 

[amancheema]

3 surefire ways to increase traffic and comments on your video


1) Do something sick


2) Do something dumb


3) Do something controversial

 

[Gsimz]

3 surefire ways to increase traffic and comments on your video


1) Do something sick


2) Do something dumb


3) Do something controversial

 

[mithu]

3 surefire ways to increase traffic and comments on your video


1) Do something sick


2) Do something dumb


3) Do something controversial

For each pont:
1) everyone focus on that one little sick thing and forgets about entire set.


2) everyone forgets everything good about the set and focuses on that one little stupid thing.


3) look at #2

What's up BTF!


I'd really like to see folks start doing public commenting/critiques again. It used to happen a ton. And imo, it definitely helped take bhangra to a new level, and encouraged people like myself to get more into the dance/circuit. Even if it's a simple "I really enjoyed that", it's better than not commenting at all.


I get that people would rather send things through PM or FB and that's fine. But please leave comments/critiques on videos on the forum.


I'm sure more people share this sentiment. And if you do, let us know by starting to comment/critique.


To Teams: Do post your vids as soon as you can. You never know what kind of critique/comment may get posted that could be a missing element to take you to the next level.


People may post comments/critiques that you completely disagree with, but whatever. You have your vision for your team and continue on that path if you wish. The people that take the time to actually post something, want to see you get better and see you succeed. And I'll repeat:


You never know what kind of critique/comment may get posted that could be a missing element to take you to the next level.


Much love!

Easier said than done. People rather not waste their times trying to critique and help teams out when most teams just want to hear is "the set was fire" and just privately tell teams that actually want to be honestly critiqued.

 

[mafzal]

I disagree w/ mithu. Sure sometimes that is the case but we do need to be more constructive on BTF. Siddy, thank you for bringing this up!

 

[hardeep_singh]

teams should start putting together good sets if they want good criticism. no point in critiquing a set which has fundamental flaws, when there are so many references for teams to turn to. show progression and people will provide criticism to help you take it further. show regression and your set will just be another disappointment and you might as well change your name to bhangra empire.

 

[faizan]

I feel like the bhangra scene is in a really weird place. While it is flourishing in the UK and AUS it is dying regionally in North America.

With some regions still strong, i.e., toronto, B.C. Other places like California (which traditionally has been the strongest center of bhangra in the USA) are in decline. The DC metro/va area, traditionally a hub of bhangra activity is in the grave yard. There has just been a real lack of discourse and critique in the past three years. Teams have started to become more choosey with their competitions, focusing on doing 2-3 a year maximum. Elite teams of yesteryear have retired, see: sgpd, abc, bk, jj, nypd, and aeg. We have like a total of 2-3 strong all girls teams. The co-ed scene is dead and the number of elite all-guys teams has been cut in half.

We just keep getting these clean, cookie-cutter sets. It's like bhangra is finally at a higher standard with a there being a lot of good teams, but very few great ones. What's accepted as an elite team today wouldn't even scratch the top 10 a few years back. Not sure what the problem is, but if we want to keep seeing legendary sets, something has to change.

North American Bhangra has been in a crisis for sometime now, and no one seems to care or notice. This is worrisome.

 

[sumeetj]

I feel like the bhangra scene is in a really weird place. While it is flourishing in the UK and AUS it is dying regionally in North America.

With some regions still strong, i.e., toronto, B.C. Other places like California (which traditionally has been the strongest center of bhangra in the USA) are in decline. The DC metro/va area, traditionally a hub of bhangra activity is in the grave yard. There has just been a real lack of discourse and critique in the past three years. Teams have started to become more choosey with their competitions, focusing on doing 2-3 a year maximum. Elite teams of yesteryear have retired, see: sgpd, abc, bk, jj, nypd, and aeg. We have like a total of 2-3 strong all girls teams. The co-ed scene is dead and the number of elite all-guys teams has been cut in half.

We just keep getting these clean, cookie-cutter sets. It's like bhangra is finally at a higher standard with a there being a lot of good teams, but very few great ones. What's accepted as an elite team today wouldn't even scratch the top 10 a few years back. Not sure what the problem is, but if we want to keep seeing legendary sets, something has to change.

North American Bhangra has been in a crisis for sometime now, and no one seems to care or notice. This is worrisome.

if cookie cutter sets keep placing, thats unfortunately what people are going to do. there are teams out there that have the work ethic and talent to put on some crazy ass performances with some risky ideas, but they step back and think "well if we just do a moderately fast saap segment, throw in a few khunda spins, put one jodi in the front of jhummar who is doing it more ballet like/lovey, do jugni to a hip hop beat, and end with lots of jumps and bethke where are arms scrape the ground, then we are almost guaranteed to place as long as we are clean".

judges in the last few years have rewarded teams for doing this as opposed to doing cool stuff - hence the shift towards it.

 

[faizan]

wbbc 2015 will include major changes to its rubric which will award set difficulty and intricacy. stay tuned.

 

[sangeensingh]

I feel like the bhangra scene is in a really weird place. While it is flourishing in the UK and AUS it is dying regionally in North America.

With some regions still strong, i.e., toronto, B.C. Other places like California (which traditionally has been the strongest center of bhangra in the USA) are in decline. The DC metro/va area, traditionally a hub of bhangra activity is in the grave yard. There has just been a real lack of discourse and critique in the past three years. Teams have started to become more choosey with their competitions, focusing on doing 2-3 a year maximum. Elite teams of yesteryear have retired, see: sgpd, abc, bk, jj, nypd, and aeg. We have like a total of 2-3 strong all girls teams. The co-ed scene is dead and the number of elite all-guys teams has been cut in half.

We just keep getting these clean, cookie-cutter sets. It's like bhangra is finally at a higher standard with a there being a lot of good teams, but very few great ones. What's accepted as an elite team today wouldn't even scratch the top 10 a few years back. Not sure what the problem is, but if we want to keep seeing legendary sets, something has to change.

North American Bhangra has been in a crisis for sometime now, and no one seems to care or notice. This is worrisome.

if cookie cutter sets keep placing, thats unfortunately what people are going to do. there are teams out there that have the work ethic and talent to put on some crazy ass performances with some risky ideas, but they step back and think "well if we just do a moderately fast saap segment, throw in a few khunda spins, put one jodi in the front of jhummar who is doing it more ballet like/lovey, do jugni to a hip hop beat, and end with lots of jumps and bethke where are arms scrape the ground, then we are almost guaranteed to place as long as we are clean".

judges in the last few years have rewarded teams for doing this as opposed to doing cool stuff - hence the shift towards it.

Wow, I couldn't agree any more.

 

[Prabhzy]

I feel like the bhangra scene is in a really weird place. While it is flourishing in the UK and AUS it is dying regionally in North America.

With some regions still strong, i.e., toronto, B.C. Other places like California (which traditionally has been the strongest center of bhangra in the USA) are in decline. The DC metro/va area, traditionally a hub of bhangra activity is in the grave yard. There has just been a real lack of discourse and critique in the past three years. Teams have started to become more choosey with their competitions, focusing on doing 2-3 a year maximum. Elite teams of yesteryear have retired, see: sgpd, abc, bk, jj, nypd, and aeg. We have like a total of 2-3 strong all girls teams. The co-ed scene is dead and the number of elite all-guys teams has been cut in half.

We just keep getting these clean, cookie-cutter sets. It's like bhangra is finally at a higher standard with a there being a lot of good teams, but very few great ones. What's accepted as an elite team today wouldn't even scratch the top 10 a few years back. Not sure what the problem is, but if we want to keep seeing legendary sets, something has to change.

North American Bhangra has been in a crisis for sometime now, and no one seems to care or notice. This is worrisome.

I actually never imagined that the NA scene had gone to this extent. I really wish there is some sort of revival and teams rethinking their strategies to aim to be elite. Tbh it is because of NA influence bhangra scene is improving in UK and Australia and i think WBBC next year will be a comp to maybe change the perception that UK, AUS teams arent weak anymore and the need to seriously improve yourself as a team might come in as a factor.

 

[mrchicity]

wbbc 2015 will include major changes to its rubric which will award set difficulty and intricacy. stay tuned.

How do you quantify this? This is a subjective score, not an objective one, because set difficulty is relative to both the difficulties of other routines at a given competition and the skill level of the judge. At Bhangra in the Burgh, the rubric had 6 points for set difficulty, and I scored teams based on how easily I felt I could learn and perform the routine, but those 6 points didn't give much room for really ranking teams by just relative difficulty. That too, how do you differentiate between set difficulty versus formation complexity or choreo complexity? If you're allocating points to these three categories, as most competitions usually do, isn't there some redundancy?

 

[mrchicity]

judges in the last few years have rewarded teams for doing this as opposed to doing cool stuff - hence the shift towards it.

That depends on what you consider cool stuff. It's all relative to what a particular judge's preferences are. The difference between 6 years ago and now is in who is doing the judging.

 

[faizan]

Here's how I have it on my rubric currently: would love feedback

Set Intricacy: 16.5%

How Difficult was the set?
Was the set safe with little risk?
Was the team's choreography intricate?
Were creative elements well transitioned into the dance?
Were formations too simple?

With good judges, common sense, and some guidance and team feedback, I don't see this category as very gray at all.

 

[siddyp]

wbbc 2015 will include major changes to its rubric which will award set difficulty and intricacy. stay tuned.

How do you quantify this? This is a subjective score, not an objective one, because set difficulty is relative to both the difficulties of other routines at a given competition and the skill level of the judge. At Bhangra in the Burgh, the rubric had 6 points for set difficulty, and I scored teams based on how easily I felt I could learn and perform the routine, but those 6 points didn't give much room for really ranking teams by just relative difficulty. That too, how do you differentiate between set difficulty versus formation complexity or choreo complexity? If you're allocating points to these three categories, as most competitions usually do, isn't there some redundancy?

allow for more sections in the rubric:

formation complexity - __/10
Choreography complexity - ___/10


And in regards to the 6 points, it is a low number to judge off of. But were you trying to say that if there were 6 teams, you'd attempt to score each team with a 1 through 6?

And regardless of the score you write, (let's just say you put down 2 10s or 6s whatever is the max) you may still know within your mind which team had the more difficult routine which can play into deliberations. Even if the 2 teams tied on that score and you can't pick the tougher routine, there are many more scores on the sheet to look at how to see if one had a better performance than the other.

Let me know if I'm interpreting something wrong.

 

[mrchicity]

Here's how I have it on my rubric currently: would love feedback

Set Intricacy: 16.5%

How Difficult was the set?
Was the set safe with little risk?
Was the team's choreography intricate?
Were creative elements well transitioned into the dance?
Were formations too simple?

With good judges, common sense, and some guidance and team feedback, I don't see this category as very gray at all.

Well then do you have it sectioned off any further? Like if a team has incredibly intricate choreo but lackluster formations, or vice versa, how might that be accounted in the category? I hate going off of points, but is there a max value for either choreo or formations? I ask this because I feel most judges are very impressionable: when they get only one quick look at a team, they can be influenced by one or two items in a routine and score a team highly on difficulty, even if a team's whole set wasn't as relatively complex. And yes, good judges make all the difference.

 

[mrchicity]

And in regards to the 6 points, it is a low number to judge off of. But were you trying to say that if there were 6 teams, you'd attempt to score each team with a 1 through 6?

At Burgh I gave most teams a score between 3-5. I never gave a 6 because none of the teams brought the most difficult set that I had ever seen. Overall, that one score didn't really matter too much because going into the judges meeting I had a pretty clear idea of who had more difficult sets and who executed them better, without really needing to go back into the scores. But ideally, I guess that a ranking between 1-8 or however many teams are at a comp would be more beneficial if you want to make the scores correlate more with relative rankings of teams.

 

[siddyp]

Here's how I have it on my rubric currently: would love feedback

Set Intricacy: 16.5%

How Difficult was the set?
Was the set safe with little risk?
Was the team's choreography intricate?
Were creative elements well transitioned into the dance?
Were formations too simple?

With good judges, common sense, and some guidance and team feedback, I don't see this category as very gray at all.

I personally would like to see the separation of choreography and formations. Though we think that the routine comprises of both, I think there is a big enough difference in taking risks with formations on its own, and choreography on its own. So while this may be 16.5% of the rubric, split that up into 2 sections to allow for scoring of formations on its own, and choreography on its own.

Also, while this may "seem" like common sense, you could change the wording to all be in the same direction to help make interpretation of the rubric easier:

How Difficult was the set?
Was the set safe with little risk? replace with ---> Did the set present a lot of risk?
Was the team's choreography intricate?
Were creative elements well transitioned into the dance?
Were formations too simple? replace with ---> Were formations Dynamic/Difficult?

So if it really was a hard routine with a lot of risk and formations were awesome, all the answers would be yes instead of yes, no, yes, yes, no.

But this isn't that big a deal

 

[faizan]

The questions I include below are to get the judges thinking. They aren't the be all and end all of the category. The idea is to focus on the heading of the category and consider different elements such as formations, choreo and gimmicks. Still working on the rubric guys, not even close to done.

I can also do it your way, where the heading is just the general idea with broken out details to focus on below. Just wanted to throw out that intricacy/difficulty will be accounted for. I don't really have an issue splitting it as follows:

Set Complexity: 16.5%

Formation Complexity: 5.5%

Choreo Complexity: 5.5%

Creative Element Complexity: 5.5%

 

[campy614]

I feel like the bhangra scene is in a really weird place. While it is flourishing in the UK and AUS it is dying regionally in North America.

With some regions still strong, i.e., toronto, B.C. Other places like California (which traditionally has been the strongest center of bhangra in the USA) are in decline. The DC metro/va area, traditionally a hub of bhangra activity is in the grave yard. There has just been a real lack of discourse and critique in the past three years. Teams have started to become more choosey with their competitions, focusing on doing 2-3 a year maximum. Elite teams of yesteryear have retired, see: sgpd, abc, bk, jj, nypd, and aeg. We have like a total of 2-3 strong all girls teams. The co-ed scene is dead and the number of elite all-guys teams has been cut in half.

We just keep getting these clean, cookie-cutter sets. It's like bhangra is finally at a higher standard with a there being a lot of good teams, but very few great ones. What's accepted as an elite team today wouldn't even scratch the top 10 a few years back. Not sure what the problem is, but if we want to keep seeing legendary sets, something has to change.

North American Bhangra has been in a crisis for sometime now, and no one seems to care or notice. This is worrisome.

if cookie cutter sets keep placing, thats unfortunately what people are going to do. there are teams out there that have the work ethic and talent to put on some crazy ass performances with some risky ideas, but they step back and think "well if we just do a moderately fast saap segment, throw in a few khunda spins, put one jodi in the front of jhummar who is doing it more ballet like/lovey, do jugni to a hip hop beat, and end with lots of jumps and bethke where are arms scrape the ground, then we are almost guaranteed to place as long as we are clean".

judges in the last few years have rewarded teams for doing this as opposed to doing cool stuff - hence the shift towards it.

Heh - this sounds familiar. I feel like I've said this before... almost word for word actually.

And to Karthik/Faizan's points:
A) I think it's ok that the score is subjective, since judging in and of itself is subjective. Treating judging objectively is how the circuit got this way.
B) Maybe it's not as redundant as you think? Maybe it's more a matter of giving things like "formation/choreo" difficulty more weight. Also I think you should throw in "creativity" - allowing bhangra to live up to the a true art form, instead of boxing it into a "traditional dance." I admit that WBBC tends to do that better than other competitions.

Anyone watch artistic gymnastics during the Olympics? The score's divided into 2 categories - difficulty and execution. Skipping most of the details - the difficulty score accounts for both acrobatic skills and artistic elements, usually amounting to a little more than a third of the total score. The other two-thirds of the score are from execution. Maybe something along these lines could work?

Regarding general "bhangra in a weird place"
History shows that art forms flourish when participants allow them to take life. By distinctly thinking of bhangra as a "traditional dance" instead of an actual art form, we've stunted it's growth. By refusing to think outside of the box, and judges/organizers refusing to reward teams for "going there", bhangra in the US has hit a plateau.

By comparison:
-Interest in artistic gymnastics grows mostly in part because difficulty grows - some elements done in current routines wouldn't have even been possible 10 years ago. It's also borrowed given back elements to other art forms (I'll take break dancing and ballet for 1000 please).
-Drawing/painting/music - all art forms that have expanded because of the different ideas of participants. Different paint/pencil strokes, different techniques, different sounds and moods - each one of them contributing to the growth of their respective arts. Millions of examples of art pieces borrowing from other art forms, or at least with it as an inspiration. It's quite beautiful!
-And for a while bhangra was doing the same. Sets became more difficult, we borrowed ideas from other art forms and even contributed back to them.

This isn't to say that we should disregard all of bhangra's elements when dancing bhangra. What I'm saying is to keep pushing the envelope. Every idea matters. Every voice counts - whether you're the captain of your team, last jori, or even a substitute. This is no longer a matter "not being able to place at a comp" - this is a matter of bhangra in the US becoming extinct.