Theme, Choreography and execution

When it comes to American Raas, "Theme" seems to take on a special meaning. In the early competitions (2004) theme did not seem to play a big role. Moon lit night, wedding (Stanford 2005) Mela Bataka Nu Shaak 2005), Boston tea party (BU 2006, and many others come to mind. Audiences really love themes. It appears to me that BOB judges have not given as much importance the theme as they have to other aspect of RAAS. I still remember the 40' plus Bollywood style back drop used by Stanford, the "Mela" props from Bataka Nu Shaak and some themes based on Lord Krishna. GWU moon light theme was less memorable but correctly done. It did not over power the dance itself.
Good choreography (what even that means) should be the most important aspect of the dance, followed very closely by execution. Imbalance of the two does not work well. If the choreography is "over done" (poor execution or poor quality of dancers), the flaws in execution become glaring and obvious. If the dance is "underchoriographed" the flaws are not as visible.
Over the years it has been my observation that well choreographed AND well executed items win. I am sure there are exceptions. I particularly don't like to see "props for the sake of props" where the dancers use them briefly like a rich man who rarely drives his Ferrari and leaves it outside his house just to show off. If a team uses "Ghada" (pots for water, they should be used properly and for more than 30 seconds. Some competitions (not the college ones) limit the number of props for this reason.
This years winners (thank you You tube and Bob tube) seem to be a nice mix, but good choreography and seem lees execution with great synchronization (where all dancers look like just one dancer with many forms) should win.

When Lord Krishna danced with Gopis) there was one Krishna for each Gopi (as depicted in Rajasthani paintings and mentioned in Puranas). Each Gopi felt close to Krishna as if she was the only one who was with Krishna. It reminds me of one story of Radha.
Once Lord Krishna invited Radha to the inner sanctum of his garden. No one was allowed there. Radha was very happy being so close to Krishna. Soon she thought that she was special and the only one who had this privilege. As she experienced a great deal of pride for being special, she felt very lonely and sad. She realized that this false pride lead to separation from her lover. Based on this Narsinh Mehta wrote the famous lines of Raas "Nagar Nandji Na Lal, Raas ramanta mari Nathdi Khovani (oh Krishna, while doing raas, I lost my precious nose ring"). Nose ring represents false pride. When she became one with Krishna and lost her false pride, she lost the nose ring. Lesson for modern day American Raas dancers? Don’t let pride of winning go through your head. Leave your rage, frustration, anger at judges aside and focus on the exhilaration that American Raas is supposed to bring! Winning and losing is based on fickle minds of judges and not on your performance!
(Picture courtsey of http://www.gaudiyadiscussions.com/index.php?showtopic=2014)

Sanedo or Snehdo?

It is called Sanedo. It started some time in 1960's. He died young. When he came up with it, people criticized him a lot, but later it became part of the Garba culture. It was started by a single individual from Rajkot. "Sanedo" comes from "Snehdo". Sneh means love. Most of the original couplets were about love. They are two lines and then the singer bursts into the words "sanedo Sanedo Lal Sanedo Sanedo". This is not exactly Raas or Garba, often done at the end of a Graba program during Navratri. It was made popular by the Mumbai crowd and by Rupal Doshi here in USA.
During the "couplet phase, you just sit and relax.Drum rhythm stops.When the word Sanedo comes, you jump and dance has hard as you can. It is more or less a free for all. There is rhythm but you are not required to dance a certain way, but most people will do the same step.
Look up on You Tube and you will find some interesting "sanedo" pieces. Since the couplets are sung without the drum, there is lot of freedom in what is said and how it is said. Nothing obscene. It often involves names of a wedding party (custom Sanedo), if the Sanedo is done during pre-wedding Sangeet or Garba as most of you will do when you get married. We recently had the pleasure of planning Garba and Bhangra for a Malayali couple. They even served North Indian food. No Bharat Natyam or Malayali folk dance there! I guess that is the trend. Then again if you see a Guju wedding party doing dance you will See lots of Bhangra and some Garba. Young people to Bhangra on the street as the procession is moving, then the whole thing stops and Garba circle starts. Fire crackers go off. Traffic is disrupted. I guess all is fair in Love, so who cares for laws and rules!

BOB Chicago here we come

It finally happened. Boston University (BU) Raas team won Maryland Masti. My understanding is that they will be in BOB. This is a "traditional" based team. Why do I know this? The captain was trained by my wife. She happens to be our lovely child (Beta tu jiti gai, Wah!). That means both of our children will have competed in BOB.
I plan to attend the competition for the first time. I might attend GWA in two weeks as one other family member is dancing there and I will be in San Diego, so might as well drive to Irvine. This is my favorite competition because it is well organized and I get to see the California and Non California teams. I have attended for last three times. Normally California teams win there because of the nature of judging (don't get mad I don't mean the judges are biased or anything like that). That is just history.
I am looking forward to this season.May the best team win it all.

World space radio interview

Yes! I have been invited to be interviewed on the Indian Satellite radio "World space" as a guest. They want to know about Gujarati culture in USA. You know I am going to open my big mouth and talk about American Raas (as I call it) and other dance forms that our kids (young adults) are performing in colleges and keeping the culture alive. I plan to talk about Rutger's use of "pink panther theme, BU's use of Boston tea party theme, Batata nu Shak etc. along with the usual serious stuff about how our culture is evolving in the west. I will try to get a voice recoding and post it here if they would let me.
India is crazy as ever. Mumbai is exploding with wealth. Now Bollywood defines Indian culture. It used to be the other way around. Culture used to define Bollywood.
Congrats to BU (my daughter's team). They were second, but I heard that the Boston competition was not terribly well organized. No comments on judges since my daughter is the captain.
I will attend Maryland Masti. I have heard that it is a good up and coming program, well organized. See you there. This will be my first Raas competition to attend this year.

Where is the real A.R. Rehman?

June 16 2007
I went to See the A.R. Rehman concert held in Dallas TX last night. I had seen one other concert here at the Nokia theater two years ago.
Remember I am talking about A.R. here, not some fly by night Bollywood concerts of drunks and concubines. I expected great sound, great singers singing their hearts out, and some serious live music.
I was very disappointed. Here is why. If you plan to plunk down one hundred bucks to see this guy, take this into consideration.
1 Sound: Local sound guy is a reputable one and has always done well. He has done many a Bollywood concerts, but the way he was asked to sit, he could not see the artists. Results were disastrous. When ever female singers were singing, their mike volume was too low for first five seconds. Volume would be raised and then in the next stanza it was properly adjusted. You would think that A.R. would get upset and do something as he was sitting right near the sound board. The ushers who have worked at the venue for a long time commented that these guys adjusted their own sound and it was not good. (Many of them were wearing their ear plugs that day. Several commented that this was bad and the previous week's Asha concert was worse.) Mind you, I have attended my share of Indian concerts and other concerts. Being an A.R. fan, I would have thought that his sound engineer would have done a better job. I know the local sound man they had hired and he has a high standard. I have used him for fairly complex situations and he tends to be precise, but he will not leave any microphone on that is not being used. May be it was his fault.

2 Music: Here is the real problem. There was no orchestra, which makes A.R. what he is. There was too much recorded music. You would hear large drum sounds when shiv Mani was not moving his hands? May be I am ignorant but some thing was not right. There was one violin and one cello player but the "violin sound" was so rich that it can only be produced by an prchestra or a synthesizer. Volume of the music was not proportionate to the singing (instruments being too loud), base was out of control. Some thing was not right. He brought in some "local" talent, which was really no talent to speak of and I did not pay to listen to some local talent of low quality.
3 Dances: Horrible.

Retired from college choreography?

Now that is a novel idea. If you are involved with Raas, Bhangra or any other Indian dance form, you might want to consider this idea. This summer we were having a problem with young boy's Raas team. They were very conscious and needed a lot of time. Young boys dancing for the first time are the hardest to train, especially if they do not know each other well. Our esteemed choreographer (to whom I am married) thought that she would ask for some one's help. She asked our son, but he was too busy doing nothing. Then came a break through. A 15 year old student who has danced with our group since he was a baby sad the Raas. He was horrified to see how the young boys were doing. He started taking their practice and things went much better. So, if you are done with the college season, find some aunties dance school or some temple or church or what ever, collect a bunch of kids and start teaching. I promise you it will be fun. That is what I do. I get involved with "polishing" items, giving them objective feed back and encourage the groups that are performing. Here is a picture of boys from 2004 Bhangra. I promise you this will be as rewarding as any good activity.

FUTURE DANCERS

My wife runs a dance school. Here is a little plug for her. She will have about 150 participants dancing at Irving Arts Center. As usual there is Bhangra, Raas, Garba, other folk dances and bunch of classical dances. Participants are from age 4 to above 50. Many of these participants have gone on to dance at college level (UT, SMU, BU, UCLA, GW to mention a few). Some have become choreographers. The show will start at 3:30 PM (NOT INDIAN TIME) on May 19. Yours truly will be compering and running lights and sound and partially manage the stage at the same time. Make up will start around noon. Some one donated food, others donated drinks (not the funny kind, just juice), some one gave cash other one donated trophies. Entry fee is 10 bucks (used to be as low as three bucks for seniors a few years back).

If you are in Dallas, come see it. It will be a bot boring in the beginning when the little ones are dancing, but by the time the 15-18 year old will be doing Bhangra, audience will be going nuts. There is one Garba item that I hope to post on U tube some day. Amazing choreography. There is a 20 minute Ramayan piece done by the school teachers. There is a true "auntie dance" where all the aunties are dancing (I won't say which one, but if you see it you will know. I call it Aunties gone wild). Here is a picture of "Rangoli" on the stage and a youngster being helped by a volunteer with picture session.

Website "nrutyashala.org" check it out.