Rice Punjabi dance wins third at nationals

By Cindy Dinh     3/27/08 7:00pm

Through leaps, hops and a few shoulder shrugs, Rice's traditional Punjabi dance team, Chowl Bhangra, which translates to Rice Bhangra, danced its way to third place last weekend in the Virsa Punjab Da competition at North Carolina State University. The club is in its second year on campus.Wiess College sophomores Sukhdeep Kaur and Monique Gill started the team last year.

"It was my aspiration in high school to start a Bhangra team here at Rice," Kaur said.

Most members of the team have little to no previous experience with this particular type of dance. For the first time, the team competed against larger schools from Toronto, Canada and the east coast in the competition.

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Hanszen College freshman Radhika Chhabra said the team has come a long way in one year.

"We've taken something that was nonexistent last year and have taken it nationally," Chhabra said.

To apply for the competition, teams submitted video samples of their performance. After the initial application, Chowl Bhangra was an alternate, but was called to perform two weeks before the competition.

Chhabra said the members of Chowl Bhangra were the underdogs in the competition.

"We were the happiest team without actually winning a competition," Chhabra said. "We came from a small school, a small team with not many alternates and our costumes were simple."

Their dance compiled eight modern and traditional songs describing different aspects of a village. The team of six males and six females performed routines choreographed by dance captains Kaur, Gill and Will Rice College sophomore Abhinav Khanna.

"In the last song we used umbrellas to dance to the thunderstorm themes," Chhabra said.

Kaur said the team is looking forward to performing its routine at the spring South Asian Society show.

"It's really touching for me to be able to bring something from my culture to share with the Rice community," Kaur said. "Placing in the competition was great, but I think the highlight was seeing my team so ecstatic about the dance that before [they came to Rice] they knew nothing about.

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