Q&A: The Big Bhangra

Less than a month ago, our orange bubble was plastered with thousands of hilarious posters featuring Sports Illustrated models and the Dos Equis guy imploring you to join the new Princeton Bhangra team. One of the team’s founding members, Akshay Kumar ’13, took the time to tell us a bit about this traditional Punjabi dance form that is certain to take the Princeton community by storm with its infectious and ecstatic energy.

Q: First and foremost, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the other co-founder Aneesh Sahni ’14?

A: I’m an operations research and financial engineering major from South Carolina. Aneesh is a potential Woody Woo major from Long Island. It’s funny, because all of last year we worked independently to organize a Bhangra team on campus. Thankfully a mutual friend introduced us at the end of last year, and Princeton Bhangra was born. Over the summer, we designed the outfits and taught ourselves the basics. Here at school, there’s a Cornell Bhangra graduate who’s been helping us with the logistics and choreography.

Q: So tell me, what exactly is Bhangra?

A: Bhangra is a high-energy folk dance from the North Indian region of Punjab. People like to say that hip-hop is to America as Bhangra is to India. It’s the type of music that you break out at Indian parties or weddings to get people hyped. It’s interesting, though, because in America and Canada, Bhangra is generally a competitive dance form.

Q: Why do you think it has become so competitive?

A: Bhangra is an extremely high-energy form of dance, so it makes more sense to have 10 minutes of a competitive routine rather than a two-hour long showcase. More importantly, it’s a way for one team to have tangible bragging rights.

Q: So what inspired you to start this club on campus?

A:Basically every Ivy League school has a Bhangra team. We figured Princeton should have the chance to dominate in one more thing. We also just really wanted to do Bhangra here on campus.

Q: Are you at all afraid that the non-Indian population on campus will just write you off as another Indian dance group?

A: Not at all. In fact, less than half of our team is Indian. We just recruited for a competitive dance team, not an Indian one. We had a really diverse group of students come to tryouts (more than 65!) and we ended up taking 11 boys and 11 girls. Obviously Bhangra is an Indian dance, but there’s no reason why a non-Indian person can’t pick it up. It’s easy to learn but hard to perfect.

Q: Speaking of tryouts, let’s talk about your advertisements. I think just about everyone on campus knows about your team because of your attention-grabbing flyers. How did you mobilize enough support for a fledgling dance group to get all of those crazy and creative advertisements up?

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A: Me and Aneesh did most of the postering ourselves, with some help from a couple of our friends. The posters were inspired by memes on the Internet: I wanted a bite-sized piece of humor that people would notice and appreciate. Once we had all of our poster designs, we decided on a “saturation policy” of systematically postering every residential building on campus. Obviously, we have no print quota left.

Q: Were you at all offended by the rugby ads that later came to exploit your own ads for attention?

A: My initial response was “Really, guys?” But I guess the fact that people got the reference to our posters proved that our strategy really worked. We had a fake chest-thumping match at the activities fair, though, which was pretty funny. In the end though, we’re probably not drawing from the same demographic, so it’s not an issue. No hard feelings whatsoever.

Q: Why do you think people should come to see Princeton Bhangra shows or competitions in the future?

A:I just think Bhangra is really fun to watch. In the same way that you yell at diSiac or BAC shows, Bhangra demands a ton of audience participation. There’s a really high level of energy at a performance. For now, we’ll probably be performing at variety shows around campus. Our long-term goal is to hopefully start hosting competitions that other collegiate and professional Bhangra teams can come participate in. Cornell, for instance, has 4,000 people coming in every year for their exhibition. And of course we’ll have workshops for people to come learn some choreography. Maybe even flash mobs in ECO 100: Introduction to Microeconomics. Watch out for that!

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Michael Becker.