Your Reach Ain't Long Enough, Your Peeps Ain't Strong Enough

[Post title refers to: Jay Z , "Takeover"]


Sorry for the delay since my last post! I hope you are all still interested, excited, pumped, other adjectives signifying that you will continue to read. Between work, visitors and the Janet Jackson greatest hits concert I was a little behind getting this writing done. On the real, the Janet concert was pretty amazing. I can’t sleep now because I am still all overstimulated from the crazy good show she put on. The woman is 50 and still working it. Next time someone tells me I am too old to compete I am screaming out “If Janet can do it, so can I!” I can hear the response: “But you aren’t a world famous bad butt with millions of adoring fans calling you back to dance.” Minor details. You say tomato, I say tomahhhhto. I don’t actually say tomahhhto. If I did I would punch myself. I do, however, say bad butt instead of bad a*$. Feel free to take that and spread it around, too.

Lights, Camera, Bhangraaaaaaaa
My first performance with LBC is one I will never forget: Bruin Bhangra 2006 in Long Beach, California. Of course, before the performance all I wanted to do was practice. Talk about practice (you talkin’ ‘bout practice?!), what we did at practice, what we will do at practice, when we will practice and when we will practice some more. I LOVE PRACTICE. (You can ask Teji about it.) I love it so much I am getting a head of myself on the chronology.

So in the Summer of 2006 I had just finished my first year of law school and was externing for a judge in Arizona. As always, Bruin was Memorial Day weekend at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. I flew to LA on the Friday night before the show to meet all the guys in Long Beach. This was technically only our second time together to practice as a full team so we had a lot of work to do.

But first, we went to the mixer. It was at the mixer that I met a now great friend of mine—Vivek. Vivek and I started talking on Friendster early in the Summer of 2005 because a mutual friend told us that we looked alike when we were children. I mean, some people might be offended by this but I did have an awesome baby comb-over so it must have been a compliment. Right? So Vivek and I gchatted (or was it AIM?) and expressed excitement over finally meeting at the Bruin mixer. I found him in the back of the mixer at the Punjabi Soormay table, wearing glasses and a banana republic employee name tag. As a joke. You should laugh. We took a picture together to mark the occasion and have joked around ever since that we were long lost brother and sister that were separated at birth and reunited through bhangra. He now lives about fifteen minutes away from me and I like to go to his house to eat his wife’s amazing cooking and do Dave Chappelle impersonations (okay fine that was only once but it was a hit). And oh, I recycle jokes in case you had not noticed.

Back to the mixer: next up was selection of the order of the show. At bhangra competitions, the normal course of action for determining show order is to allow the teams to select a number at random. I was SO excited that the guys let me pick our place. As I got up to choose our number, there were only two spots left to choose from—either first or last. The positions were wrapped in a large Hershey’s chocolate bar and placed in a large bowl in the front of the room. I walked up to grab a number wearing the black and white flower sari that I borrowed from Harmeet (it was the first time I had ever worn a sari) and everyone was chanting my name as I reached for one of the two bars. In my head I had chosen which bar I would select but as I reached toward it I thought “no, no, you have bad luck--go against your gut instinct and you will choose the right one.” So I reached for the other chocolate bar, unwrapped it, with my heart nearly beating out of my chest. I stared in amazement at the number wrapped in the bar. I CHOSE FIRST. If that is not anti-climactic, I just don’t know what is. The chanting stopped, needless to say. I walked back over to the LBC table with my head hanging to the side thinking that in my first official act as an LBC member, I had let my team down.

After the mixer, we decide to practice in some random parking lot away from the other teams. Annay couldn't find his shoes so he had to wear mine. Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, they were slippers-not real shoes. We practiced as long as we could, perfecting the small parts and running through what we needed to. Like I said, I love practice so I made us keep going and going and going. I distinctly remember Hans saying “Man Jas, you really love to dance-you look so happy practicing.” He spoke the truth.

I also remember that we needed to come up with an ending at this practice. Yes, it was two days before the show and we didn’t have an ending. We have done this several times. So we came up with the choreography that Gurdeep, Ambi and I would do at the end of the dance while the rest of the guys were getting into the stunt formation and called it a night.

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect.

The next day, Saturday, we spend the day practicing in front of the venue—the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. We were greeted by Harjot and the rest of the Gabroos as well as our good friends on the Duniya Allstars. This was my first time meeting the Gabroo Punjabis in real life. Of course I had seen their various videos, including the hilarious ones where they filmed themselves driving to competitions, singing and doing other random, hilarious things (an example but I am sure there are more that I just cannot seem to find at the moment). I was so excited to see them. One of them even interviewed me after the show asking if I was the “Michigan Girl” they remembered from videos. I confirmed that I was but recall pretty silent in this interview. I probably just stood there with a goofy smile on my face, so excited about absolutely everything going on around me.

The tandiyann billyaan (cool cats) from the Duniya All Stars (a team from Vancouver that goes way back), stopped by our practice, gave us high-fives, hung out, the usual. These were the days when you kicked it with other teams—you made new friends every which way you turned. The Duniya dudes (special shout out to the Duniya super star Raju Johal on his upcoming album and DOPE single-get it iTunes if you have not already—Nanchna Pasand) were our buddies, plain and simple. I had the pleasure of competing against them after years at the Elite 8 competition in 2010. It reminded me of the good ole’ days.

After practicing, we got ready and that night (still Saturday) we went to the competition pre-party in the awesome yellow school bus. In normal bhangra competition form, there was not enough space for all of us so we crammed ourselves in the bus, singing boliyaan the whole way to the venue. We also started the “bus driver” chant, which turned out to be a big hit. I wish I had something more memorable to say about the pre party. I don’t. It was fun. We stayed up late, in true LBC fashion. This is where I started to learn that these guys take having fun seriously. Seriously.

The next day, Sunday, was the day of the show. Being the practice lover that I am, I wanted to ensure that we had time to do a full run through before our actual tech time (anyone who has danced with me knows that I absolutely am not okay with the first full out run through of the day to be our tech time). So, we got up and got ready to go. Random aside: Everyone thought it was so weird that I was going to shower before tech time. Especially considering I was only going to dance for two minutes. I am not sure what it is about bhangra weekends, but I just feel the incessant need to shower. On Sunday before tech, again before the show, again after the show and then maybe if I am awake enough after the after party. Bhangra involves a lot of sweating. And if you know me you probably also know that sweat and I are no strangers. I am not sure why I just felt comfortable enough to talk about my sweating issues on a public forum. It is late. I might regret this in the morning. Those of you reading this before my regret kicks in, causing me to delete this, I hope you are getting a good laugh.  To continue on the shower discussion, Sukh does this thing he calls "body showers" when he is in a hurry on competition weekends. We say "Sukh hurry up we gotta go." He says, "Okay I'll be ready just gotta take a quick body shower." I still don't know what the difference is between that and a regular shower. More important question: How did this become a post about hygiene?

So we started our tech time and it was AMAZING. We did our formations walk through before doing our run through to music. As the music started, I waited in the curtains, in my usual back corner space. Waiting in the curtains for an entire performance is thrilling and nerve wrecking at the same time. It gives me six minutes to think about messing up, to get nervous about the crowd, to convince myself that I am going to forget a move and get hated on because I only have like ten moves to do total. But it also gives me six minutes to watch my brothers dance and to cheer them on one by one, screaming, jumping up and down, and waiving at them with both hands (it is a trend in my life). So tech time comes and goes and the next thing I know we are suited and booted (hey Jazzy B) and heading to the venue for the show.

Showtime! In another post.