Choreo Nite, was held on Friday, 25th Septmeber at SAC. Perhaps it was bad timing, perhaps it was because the LitSoc calendar was delayed or perhaps it was because of the proximity to Shaastra, even with the added allure of air-conditioning in this goddarned weather, the general level of competition and the audience enthusiasm saw a significant dip from last year. The general coordination was off in most cases and there seemed to be a lack of real zing.
The first team to take stage was Godav – A doing the dandiya. No wait it was Godav – B. Actually it was Jamuna A who turned in a par for the course performance. Tapti though had tried something novel with their attempt at shadow dancing, demonstrated inexperience and brought on shouts of “Go Sharav”. Next up was easily the most eagerly awaited performance of the evening. With vampires and dark angels floating around, Sharav brought out their theme fairly well. However the usual coordination that is their forte was off and their performance earned them fourth place. The surprise package were Narmad who had completely ignored concepts like the theme, props and so on and so forth. They turned in an extremely fast paced and short out and out hip hop performance. Though there were several glaring flaws, Prateek (Base2) carried the show on his shoulders and their original choreography caught the fancy of the judge and earned them third place.
Mandak then impressed with a very tight performance. Their hip hop centric set was well choreographed (by Kilo) and much better coordinated than any of the previous teams. They took top honours. After the energetic feat by Mandak , Ganga’s performance was very low key with nothing really different except the part where they danced with volleyballs! Their performance lacked the winning spirit and they were nowhere in contention for the podium. Though the Saras “Girls” came second , they were definitely the stars of the night and got the loudest cheers in SAC! With awesome co-ordination, shiny outfits and the generous use of the good ol’ booty shake they got the crowd going.
Out of the lot the most bored and boring lot turned out to be Alak. One good thing about their performance was them proving that even corpses can do the Bhangra! Godav was probably counting on all the noise and confusion to slip away with a sequence which was copied straight from Saarang ’09. They were disqualified and next time will probably look for something really, really old to copy from.
What do you get when you add random people, random music and random dancing ? A “B” team! If fun factor was the only criteria, the B teams would be the clear winners. Hostel definitions started blurring and in a while the only criteria was hands, legs and the guts to go on stage. With an impressive turnout from each hostel, the B teams demonstrtated the true spirit of dancing – good ol’ fun. Sharav B was the only exception to the B team trend and keeping to tradition had a very well coordinated dance in ethnic attires by the pass outs. Vociferous cheering was only to be expected. They were after all Sharav.
Final Results – Mandak came first with Saras, Narmad and Sharav completing the list in that order.
