As I have mentioned before, I have been involved in bhangra in some manner since I was about 5 years old. I have learned many of the different moves, starting from a beginner level and working myself up to an advanced level. When I was in elementary and middle school, I would be a part of the local team at the gurudwara, the local place of worship for Sikhs. We would compete in small competitions or simply put on performances at different events. When high school rolled around, I wasn’t able to keep up with all of the events, but I still enjoyed dancing around my house and watching the performances. Now, I’m in college, and I am able to pick it up again. Maybe not at this exact moment since we’re all in quarantine, but I have enjoyed getting back into the dance over the past year. It has many differences compared to what I remembered in my earlier years of dancing that I would like to share.

It’s a fun environment to get involved with. At the college level, we are students that are solely responsible for all of the logistics of the team. Before, I was responsible solely for myself and learning my own choreography. Now, it is a greater team effort. As a team, we all make sure everybody is understanding what they must do whether it is choreography or formations. Of course, we have leaders and mentors that set the goals for the team, but we all work together to make sure we are doing our best.

It is also interesting to consider that we are all students who come to college for the primary purpose of obtaining a higher level of education, but we can still get involved in dancing with others. We can still uniquely come up with choreography sets, new tricks, new moves, new music mixes, and much more. We can still remain connected to our culture or learn something about a new culture through bhangra.

The preparation of the dance season will begin before the summer begins. In April and May, teams may still be competing, but they will also be preparing for the next year. In this preparation, teams will choose captains and other leadership positions for the organization. Once established, we will compile music and songs that we want to include in the official mix, and we create a mix to base our choreography off of. Captains will begin creating the choreography, sometimes with input from the team. Usually, by the start of the academic year, the team will have majority of the choreography established. It is now a matter of teaching it to the rest of the team and creating formations for the set. Throughout the year, college teams will typically meet about 3-4 times a week to practice or go over logistics. Our practices are typically around 2 hours each day; however, if necessary we may continue for longer periods of time. For competitions, there will be times where we may meet every day of the week and repetitively practice our choreography until we feel it’s perfectly executed. In terms of logistics, we want to make sure that we have enough performances that spreads the awareness of the dance. We also want to grow our team as big as possible. While there may be only about 8-14 dancers on the stage, the team is often much bigger than that. This is the general cycle and experience of what college bhangra looks like. Different teams will have different specific approaches, but it is important and interesting to note that it is all done by students.