Ten teams. Fourteen performances, featuring stand up comedy, hip hop, South Asian fusion, and most of all – Bhangra, Bhangra, Bhangra. Four hours of Bhangra. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night.

Bhangra, as defined by the hosts of the event, Chak De and Mayur-SASA, “is a lively and energetic folkdance that is usually performed while celebrating the annual harvest.” Its beginnings lie in Punjab, an area lying in both East Pakistan and Northwest India, and the accompanying music of the dance is mostly vocals, drums, and a variety of other tradition instruments. Many of the acts featured in Bhangra in the Burgh also demonstrated the interesting contemporary “[fusion] with Western elements, such as hip-hop and reggae.” The event donated proceeds to the Homeless Children's Education Fund of Allegheny County (www.homelessfund.org) and was an official event for the CMU International Festival.

The first in a promised annual event, last Saturday's Bhangra in the Burgh delivers just what is promised: Bhangra in Pittsburgh. Teams ranged from Sonay Gabroo Punjab De from Toronto, UVA di Shaan from the University of Virginia, Khushiyan with members from University of Pittsburgh, Columbia, Cornell, and DAV College of Chandigarh, and hometown heroes like the Steel City Girls from University of Pittsburgh and Three Rivers Bhangra. Each group had its entourage, and with every lull during the event came cheers and shouts from the spectators to make sure everyone else in the audience knew which team they were supporting.

The performances made by the Bhangra teams were surprising and pleasantly long – about 8 minutes each, with the action on stage never skipping a beat. While the dancing was exciting and intense, it was precisely because of this intensity that Bhangra fatigue set in for me around the fourth team performance – not because I was bored, but because it was all so overwhelming. My only previous Bhangra experience at last Fall's Dancers' Symposium did nothing to prepare me for so many consecutive performances of Bhangra. After a while, though, it went away, and I continued to fully enjoy the exhilarating show.

Moments that stood out for me were the playful gags of Three Rivers Bhangra, with its unabashed pride in the Steelers and Holiday Inn Express commercial parody backed up by impressive dancing; the stunts of Steel City Girls; and the live Bhangra music performance backing up the frenzied dancing of the Rutgers University Guys. All of the acts had their own moments, though, and there wasn't one poor performance in the lot. This event was a tribute to the months, for some even years of hard work and dedication each team applied in order to perfect their performances.

In between blocks of Bhangra, performances by CMU's Tanah South Asian fusion dance troupe (an alluring show toying with the seven deadly sins), iFS Performance Team (showcasing the hip hop talent of our school), and a stand-up routine by MC and prominent Indian comedian Rajiv Satyal were a good change-up, cleansing the palate for more Bhangra.

Drawbacks of the event were expected of a first time attempt. While very ambitious, or even because of its ambitions, mistakes really unfitting of such a large event occurred. Each team had a short introduction video, and the computer that was being used made many of the intros run poorly, with lots of music and image skipping. The audience was also very enormous, with Soldiers and Sailors' lobby being inadequate to support the traffic of so many arriving and walking around during intermission – a quick trip to a vending machine felt like wading through a subway crowd, and traveling from one end of the lobby to the other was out of the question. As an unexpected twist, Satyal also had to partially stall the show with some more stand-up, as the judging was still being decided. Of course, it should be stressed that all of these reasons are negligible, especially when considering all the things that did go right.

The last team in the show was CMU's home Bhangra team, Chak De. As host, Chak De danced non-competitively, and added yet another great performance  to the night. The dance ending with Chak De members holding up signs that read “CMU” and “Chak De”... while sitting on the shoulders of other members. At the end of the night, New York University took Third Place, followed by Sonay Gabroo Punjab De in Second Place, and Rutgers University took home First Place of the first Bhangra in the Burgh.   To summarize: the show was an absolute blast, and I can't wait to go to the Second Annual Bhangra in the Burgh. With such an ambitious and well-executed event already under their belt, Mayur-SASA and Chak De are sure to put on an even more spectacular show next year.

Editor's Note: A few minor gramatical changes were made after publishing to improve the readability of this article.

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