Bhangra Bash 2008

Last night I went with a small passel o' folks to see Bhangra Bash again. I went last year and was really inspired, and this year was just as good! I'm looking forward to going back to bhangra lessons in April.

I'm pretty blogged out with my last post, so I'll just leave you with some pictures. Our favorites were the guys in red and gold, and the gals in fushia and lime, but neither of those teams won. Oh well! Doesn't the first guy in blue look like Michael?
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Bhangra night

Last night I went to a fund raiser for my bhangra dance school, and I got to dance a routine again! This time I got to wear the pretty purple costume instead of the orange. I don't have any pictures or videos of my performance, but I did take video of the senior dance students' performances. Enjoy!

Video Evidence

Monica posted the video of our bhangra performance! I'm cut out of a lot of it, so you can just imagine that I'm doing it just as well as the two gals in blue and white. Heh. I start out on the far left of the stage.

Orange Isn't My Color

But when I wear orange for bhangra, it's great! Actually, orange does match my hair. Saturday I performed in my first bhangra dance on stage in public. It was scary! Here my teacher Shub from Rhythms of India dance school gets Monica and I dressed for the dance, and below she fixes up pretty Mehra.

We were dancing at the Punjabi Virsa Mela 2007, which is a celebration for Punjabi youth in the area. We did the dance which I posted a YouTube clip of us practicing a couple of months ago. Another dancer caught our Saturday performance on digital video, but I haven't seen it yet and it isn't yet available for posting. I'll link to it as soon as I can. Assuming it's not a disaster, that is! Shub said we did it 98% perfect, so that a good sign.

I was all hopped up on bhangra when I came home, and I decided to find out when next year's Bhangra Bash is. It's on March 29th! The day after my birthday! So I definitely know what I want to do for my 40th birthday -- go watch the Bhangra Bash competition and then head over to the Showbox for the after party. Come with me!

Arachno-Bhangra

Here’s a video a classmate shot so we could practice our Bhangra routine at home. Luckily, I was on the other side of the room for the second half of the routine which I didn’t really know. I actually did better than I thought I did, but it did confirm my suspicion that I look a bit like a spastic spider when I dance.

Bhangra Bash!

Tonight I went to see a bhangra dance competition in Seattle with 6 other totally cool people. It was incredibly fun! The music is really infectious, and you can't help but want to jump around to it. I've been taking bhangra dance lessons and wanted to see the real thing.
Believe me, doing this will make you sweat. The teams did pretty long routines that demanded a lot of stamina. They even made pyramids, and stood on each other's shoulders while playing drums. These folks have quads of steelMy camera is pretty wimpy for theater conditions, but here's a 30 second video clip to give you an idea.