Even Scuba Steve Would Find It Hard To Breath, Around These Leagues

[Post title refers to: Lupe Fiasco, "Dumb It Down"]

For today’s entry, I provide some basic background. If you are asking yourself, what the heck is this “bhangra” this girl keeps referring to and what is its history—rest assured that will become clear to you as you read on (also, YAY that you are reading this!). For now, I hope it suffices to say that bhangra is a traditional folk dance from the North Western region of India. It was traditionally performed as a celebratory dance around the time of harvest and centers on the beats of a two headed drum, or a dhol.

Wait a minute, there are bhangra teams?
A preliminary note for those non competitors out there who might be asking what a bhangra team is and what a competition entails: A bhangra team often consists of anywhere from 8 to 16 dancers. A team can be co-ed, all-male or all-female. They can be independent or from a university/college. Most competitions will not distinguish between the two. In addition, a team might dance to pre-recorded music or to live music, depending on their preferences. For a typical competition, anywhere from eight to twelve teams are selected. In order to be selected, teams submit an application and a video of a recent performance or practice. With the increase in the number of teams, this can be a challenging process. Once accepted to the competition in question, a team will prepare an eight minute routine.

Showtime!
When competition time comes, a team will travel to the competition location, almost always on their own dime or through the generous funding of donors/schools/ community organizations for a weekend trip. Most teams will arrive at the official team hotel on Friday night. They will then attend a team “mixer” where members will get to interact with members of other teams and the order of the show is selected or revealed. I really love competition mixers. This is where you get to see other teams, hang out, make new friends, do bhangra battles (yes, we battle (we gotta keep it in the battle, right ya’ll?--Jay Z unplugged. Cop it if you don’t have it)). This isn’t exactly the case in the scene today, as teams often leave as soon as they get the order of the show. We can talk about that later.

On the day of the show, the teams take twenty minutes each to rehearse their routine on the stage of the venue where the competition will be held. Those are the only 20 minutes allotted to the teams to run through all logistical issues with sound, lighting, formations—every single element of the performance must either be perfected there or back in the parking lot of the hotel the teams are staying at (I mean, where else can you have 8-16 people do a full-fledged 8 minute routine without causing some sort of major disruption?). This “tech time” almost always runs late. And it almost always is the time when teams have the most opportunity to hang out and get to know each other. Or mean mug each other. Either way. After tech time, teams engage in whatever pre-performance routine they might have, whether it be napping, singing songs, pretending to wrestle, discussing, eating, mean-mugging some more, whatever. Then, the teams get dressed in their full outfits and head to the venue for the show.

Ah, the show.