Gana Bajana!

Last night was the infamous SIP Cultural Show. This event occurs every semester as a final show for all of the international students who have been taking Indian cultural classes like Indian dance or Sitar. It is also a nice opportunity for Indian students to gather and mock the white kids as we dress in funny costumes and make embarrassing, beginner-level attempts to perform something we've only been learning for about three months. It is also the Study India Program's favorite thing to publicize in all of their informational material. The program website is covered with pictures of past shows and all semester long our professors and program coordinators have been talking about it in excitement while the rest of us looked forward to it with anxiety and fear.

Because I was in two dance classes this semester I got to perform two silly dances in two silly costumes. Dance costumes, in general, tend to be flashy and elaborate, but we're in India and here there is no such thing as flashy, there is only extremely ornate or under-dressed. Not wanting us to be under-dressed, those in charge instructed the dancers to arrive to the theater for hair, makeup, and costumes at 2:45 for the 6:00 show. It took most of this time for a the hair and makeup people to make us look fit for the Indian stage. Our faces were caked with makeup, and jewelry was placed wherever we had a free body-part, and we were each given a lovely false braid in our hair. Somehow I ended up being the only blonde in either of my dance classes, but this did not deter the hair/makeup crew from giving me the same black braid that everyone else got. The black didn't necessarily match everyone else's hair perfectly, but from the stage it blended in ok. The blonde-to-black transition was much less subtle.

The show began promptly one hour and fifteen minutes late.

My first dance was Kuchipudi, a beautiful South Indian classical dance form that I have grown to hate because of our cruel cruel professor. In spite of the long hours of brutal practices, the dance came together quite nicely, and the elaborate costumes hopefully distracted the audience from the glaring mistake that we made as a group in the middle of the dance.

After Kuchipudi, my friend Laura and I had to run backstage for a fast costume change into our Kathak dance costumes. It's a bit of a miracle we were able to do it considering the Kuchipudi costumes took three hours to get on in the first place. Unfortunately, since this was such a quick transition we didn't get quite as many photos of the Kathak costumes...we do, however, get to keep those costumes, so I can give you all a live showing some time.

Kathak is a North Indian dance form which is a lot harder and, in my opinion, more enjoyable than Kuchipudi. (Interesting side note: One theory of ethnochoreology suggests that Indians who traveled to Spain in the 11th century brought Kathak with them which eventually developed into Flamenco and a few hundred years later when the Spanish Armada crahsed in Ireland, Flamenco evolved into Irish step dancing. It's a debatable theory--it seems like if it were true I should be much better than I am at Kathak.) Kathak involves a lot of fast, complicated footwork which we have been practicing very hard. The dance could have looked really good...if our teacher, who was controlling the drum and therefore, the speed of the dance, had not decided as we entered the stage that he wanted us to go about 50 times faster than we had ever practiced. I kept missing steps and making mistakes from the speed then halfway through the dance I looked over to see that two of the other girls' false braids had come flying off from spinning around so fast. Another girl's earring flew off into the audience, hitting a representative from the American Consulate. A good Kathak dancer's face should be expressive with a lot of coy smirks and smiles, but I have a feeling my face (exaggerated by the extreme makeup) was generally panic-stricken throughout the piece.

I spent most of the rest of the show backstage trying to wipe off the makeup at least to get to a point where I was recognizeable again. The general reaction among my friends afterwards was "That was great! Good job! Just...uh...which one were you?"

I know the majority of the show was videotaped and is making its way to youtube, so I will share the videos when I get a chance...that is, as long as all of the mistakes I was making aren't too obvious.

And there is the story of my Indian classical dance debut (and likely farewell).