Yale Jashan Bhangra @ TOI 2016 -3rd Place

[Nish Swami]

Hey Everyone,

Here’s our video from the Taste of India competition where we won 3rd place. We had an absolutely amazing time, and we’d like to thank Vandana and the entire Taste of India committee for being fantastic hosts! Special shoutout to Rochester and CMU for well-deserved placings, T52D and VT bhangra for helping with our paghs, and all the other teams for fantastic performances!

This year, we started with a very young team, and we’re proud especially of our younger members and their incredible growth over the last year. This year wouldn’t have been possible without the effort of some very important people. Thanks to our former captain Anurag for helping us start our mix, Inder Pal for our fantastic new vardiyaan, Aalok for our nice new saaps, and former captain Govind for some awesome feedback!

Looking forward, we’re ready to work even harder and we’d greatly appreciate feedback/critiques! Also, if anybody has any other videos (especially one including our chimta player), please email them to yalejashanbhangra@gmail.com

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDaUQ0nVGE

Dancers:
Ferozi: Melia Bernal and Nishwant Swami
Purple: Payal Marathe and Anson Wang
Blue: Shona Hemmady and Harman Singh
Green: Zoey Peterson and Phil Abraham
Red: Sreeja Kodali and Dipon Ghosh
Yellow: Aditi Ramachandran and Akarsh Sharma
Chimta: Priyanka Krishnamurthi

 

[R_Sharma]

Congrats on the placing! Just some things I noticed from watching the video--


Positives:


1. All your dancers maintained solid energy throughout the performance and that worked really well in your favor. People got their legs up throughout and didn't tire like crazy in the end.The dancer discrepancy that usually shows due to lack of stamina wasn't super apparent here.


2. For the most part, your set was clean. You guys hit your angles and executed your choreo very in sync.


3. Everyone looked like they were having fun!


Room for improvement:


1. Definitely could use some more variation/intricacy in formations. A lot of the formations seemed to be simple vertical lines that blocked a lot of dancers. Also, the transition movement between formations could be a lot cleaner too. Transitioning between formations should look as clean as the formations themselves.


2. Although your choreo was well executed, I feel like it could have been more complex/faster. Some segments felt too slow and it seemed like you guys were spending too many beats on one step.


3. Everyone could incorporate shoulder movement into their dancing a lot more. Even on basic steps, you guys had a lot of people not moving their shoulders at all. The lack of shoulders was really clear when you guys did khunde chaal--- there isn't much else to do in that step other than shake your shoulders and get low.


Again congrats on the performance and let me know if you have questions.

 

[SGupta7]

Solid performance that I think will help give you guys some momentum going into next season. Definitely room for improvement though. I felt like you guys had a pretty big disparity between your top 4 and bottom 4. Like for every person that did something really well, there was someone on the team who did it poorly. It seemed like ferozi and red were your top jodis (especially red guy and ferozi girl). Ferozi girl had great nakhra. Dark blue guy on the other hand barely smiled. Red guy and yellow guy had solid energy throughout, dark blue guy and green guy seemed gassed at the end. Yellow guy did well with his pagh issue, but chaddars were really poorly tied.


I know you you have a young team so these things happen, but as you grow as dancers its important to factor in stage presence, energy, and posture just as much as you emphasize the mix and the choreo.


The set itself was pretty good, didn't like that half your dancers weren't facing the crowd for the whole mela but thats a personal preference. Also the stage seemed kind of small and that seemed to factor into some of the mistakes I saw, but overall I thought you guys did a good job of throwing in some "x factor" moments into the set. The mela, jhoomar, and props were solid. Jugni didn't hit for me.


On one last positive note, your girls wayyy outperformed your guys in my opinion. Well done, ladies! Good luck in the future, excited to see more vids from you guys

 

[Howie Magz]

In my personal opinion this has been the best I have seen Yale Jashan Bhangra in years. I loved that you guys got nee vardiyan because I was personally not a fan of your past vardiyan. I was impressed at the level of execution and cleanliness of the formations. Also you guys were very clean for the most part and also better choreo than you guys have had in the past. My overall critique is that I am not a big fan of your guys dancing form. Try to dance more folk because the circuit is leaning now more towards that manner, but do not lose that entertainment factor at the same time. I would like to say that this set was very safe in my opinion. Going forward, this is a set I would expect from a collegiate teams. There weren't any huge x-factors that wowed me. It needs to come in the form of really complex and intricate choreography combined with a well thought out gimmick. I do think that you guys are ready to compete on a much bigger stage in terms of competitions, but if you want to place and establish a reputation as a team to be feared when going to competitions those things need to be changed. Once again this was a very solid start and a good performance and I expect that next year for you guys to come strong in the circuit.

 

[smehta313]

Yellow and Blue girls (Shona and Aditi, I'm pretty sure) were both phenomenal.


my sentiments are similar to howie's and what I told y'all Saturday night, bring the level of dancing up and equalize your dancers and your team will be scary good in the upcoming year.

 

[nikkikesav]

Congrats on the placings! Really enjoyed the performance.

Some things I really liked:

- you guys had a couple of really creative moves put in the set which was really fun to watch
- you have some really talented girls on the team. i think they might be better than some of the dudes, so major props
- everything looked pretty clean i.e. formations

Some things I feel that could be improved in the future:

- try to make some formations a little more complex. what the set had was clean, but try to push the boundary a little and introduce some moves that are even cooler with a sick formation.
- big thing: emphasize that shoulders should be executed from your shoulder; it shouldn't be an arm bobbing movement. you guys have some simple choreo for transitions. here, shoulders are key to not letting the intensity of the set drop.
- try to make it look like you guys are having more fun; there were some people who didn't smile for a lot of th set, especially towards the end when dancers get tired. the occasional head tilt or look at another dancer really goes a long way and it adds to the overall enjoyment aspect that the audience and judges can see.

Again, congrats on the placing. Don't hesitate to hit me up with any questions you may have and can't wait to see what else you guys do in the future!!

 

[sahrawat]

Congratulations, glad to see your work this year pay off! I like some of the changes you guys have made since the last time I saw this set. Just some comments:


The energy that other people have already mentioned was definitely a plus, with the exception of a couple dancers who clearly dropped off towards the end. I would just caution that when you guys do moves with extra energy because you're at the front or something, don't let it come at the cost of body control. If it starts to look like you're slightly ahead of the beat, or your arms/legs are becoming sloppy or flailing, the enthusiasm doesn't have the desired effect. I thought choreo alternated between stagnant and quite creative. Your segment with Photo, for example, had a lot of moves strung together quite nicely with some nice phumaniya variations, but because it was essentially entirely in one standard formation, it didn't look as dynamic as it could've. There were a couple moments where right after a cool sequence of moves, there would be just 8 beats of sways or hops with hardly any variation in movement or formation, but if you can get more creative with that then I think that'll help a lot. I really liked the second half of the khunde segment and the ending sequence after the drop. I think if you guys can bring everyone up the same level of stamina and execution and update your dancing style to be more dynamic and complex, you'll be in good shape for next year!

 

[abhij95]

Huge strides have been made since MCB 1.


Aditi you killed it!