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If you love to dance (and even if you don’t) the one place you would have wanted to be on Saturday, February 11th, 2012 was the South Asian Showdown (SAS). SAS is one of the biggest national dance competitions in the country and is held annually at the John Hancock Auditorium in Boston. This was the third year that the dance competition was held, and like prior years, the venue was sold out!
From the second the show started, the immense talent of the teams was evident. The high octane show attracted not only the desi-crowd, but also non-deis. In fact, many people said they’d never seen an event like this before and were already exited for the next year’s competition!
People enjoyed the three and a half hours of pure entertainment that all the national teams brought to the stage! The competition is divided into 3 main categories: Bhangra, Fusion and Hindi Film Dance “HFD”, and Garba/Raas! There were 3 teams per group, except Fusion/HFD which were combined into one group this year and featured 6 total competing teams. This category offered both a first place and second place winner, while the bhangra and garba/raas had only first place winners.
In case you’re not familiar with the 4 types of dance forms above, here is a brief description:
- Bhangra is a folk dance from the Punjab region of India.
- Fusion is a conglomeration of all South Asian dance and any other dance form that the team chooses to use.
- Garba/Raas is a folk dance from the Gujarat region of India.
- Hindi-Film/Bollywood is the dance form originating from the Bollywood film industry in Mumbai.
This year SAS had teams from Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Boston. Cornell Bhangra won the Bhangra category. Broad Street Baadshahz won the Hindi-Film/Fusion category with a second place tie of Brown Badmaash and Columbia Dhoom. University of Maryland won the Garba/Raas category. All these teams and the others that competed were phenomenal, but only one could win the overall prize and that was the Broad Street Baadshahz. This was the second year in a row that they won overall!
The Boston Based dance troupe, Rainbow Tribe, ended the night on a high note with their 12 dancers rocking the stage.
One World Cuisine was the food vendor of choice as they sold Indian food and drinks all night!
The show was also captured on video by Sahara One which will air the show nationally on television within the next few months. If you missed this show this past year, you’ll want to attend next year (February 9th, 2013)!
South Asian Showdown is hosted by a non-profit organization called South Asian Nation that promotes cultural awareness nationally. To help support South Asian Nation in any way, please contact us at the above e-mail address or phone number. You can learn more about the organization at www.southasiannation.org.
To learn more about the competition visit, www.southasianshowdown.com and of course, keep it locked to UrbanAsian for more details.
Photo Credit: Michael Arteen
Winners List:
Bhangra First Place – Cornell Bhangra
Garba/Raas First Place – UMD EntouRaas
Fusion/HFD 1st Place – Broad Street Baadshahz
Fusion/HFD 2nd Place – TIE – Brown Badmaash & CU Dhoom
Overall Winner – Broad Street Baadshahz
