Kahaani S2

Kahaani is a dance show which means story and it is of Indian culture which dives into traditional or bollywood-style dances from different regions all over the  country. I signed up for Kahaani and was selected for a partner dance that takes place on Thursday lunchtimes. We have created a chat group so we can keep in contact. Dance practice hasn’t started yet but on Tuesday the 5th of November, we will have an all cast meeting to discuss skipping rehearsals and other issues that some dances may face, commitment is key. I did this dance last year and I enjoyed it and I wanted to do it again (partially because I didn’t get into Culturama) but also because I wanted to be involved in a dance this year as well as experience a different culture.

28th Nov – for the past 3 rehearsals we have been learning the choreography lead by our two dance leaders, Anisha and Adrija. The dance is a partner dance. Some of us have been getting distracted pretty often but the routine is easy to learn so far. The dance leaders leave videos for those who have been absent from the rehearsals. However, today some of the people from either the Kolkata GC or the general committee of Kahaani came in and said that during our practices, we start way too late and only have 20 mins to rehearse which is a very small amount of time. I generally come on time to these rehearsals but I just need to be more focused when practicing the dance itself. A video is attacked from the first part of the first dance in which everybody is in.

We have been practicing and learning the dance routine every Thursday lunch for the past couple of months. The learning was steady but slow. Not many videos have been taken and not shared on the group chat for our dance so it has been hard to remember and practice the routine as well as finding time to do so. The two dance shows are this Thursday (23rd January). The light plot was last Sunday (19th January) but unfortunately I had not been able to make it due to my Math Tuition and a friend’s birthday event that I could not miss. The last Thursday practice during lunch time before the week of the show, the girl-girl pairs were outside practicing the first two dance routines whereas the guy-girl pairs were inside the exam hall learning the 3rd dance. I was apart of the girl-girl pairs group and we were refining the dance as some of the dance moves weren’t matching the beat and there were many of the same dancing action that were going on for too long but we would need the opinion of the dance leaders in order to change that. It has been a bit stressful as we still don’t know the transitions nor how each dance ends and the show is in 3 days. There are two long rehearsal on Monday (20th) and on Wednesday (22nd) which will include a full run through with costumes, except Wednesday includes make-up. Hopefully, the final version of the our entire dance will be more refined and put-together on day of the show. I have been a bit unfocused during the Thursday practices but I have been trying to pay more attention and gather more time for practice.

During dress rehearsals and before the show, we were able to change some of the dance moves as they were too complicated and we didn’t have enough time to teach everyone so we changed them into simpler ones that were still catchy and matched our dance theme of “Love”.  The first show on Wednesday was pretty quiet only 10 people came but since we were unable to promote the show due to Singapore’s regulations, not many people were aware that there were tickets for this show. The two main shows on Thursday were better as we got better by practicing when we could. It was a lot of fun and i’m really glad I took part in this show. I learned how hard it is to lead people although I wasn’t a leader myself, and I am really grateful for the leaders and the committee for being able to run this show more or less smoothly.

Here are the only videos I was able to get from the show of our dance:

• https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YNv5-UEPIbvCBiY9qxsCmOib-7TY4l_G/view?usp=sharing
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M5hJfjUw6mFSbhhpolC0QZ6etc6N3t0S/view?usp=sharing

Here are some pictures of me:

Learning Outcomes:

LO5: Collaboration was a very important aspect of Kahaani because nothing would work if people didn’t work together. An example of this would be when a dance move did not fit into the dance whatsoever, we (the dancers) had to let the leaders know this problem and it got changed in the end which improved the dance by a lot. Us dancers had to stick together and collectively listen to the leaders. Another example of this would be that if everyone put in the effort to practice the dance in collaboration, then the overall performance would better as well.

LO4: I attended every lunch time practice session and rehearsal except the light plot due to other commitments. I was constantly engaged in the sessions and tried hard to focus on the dances and practice.

LO6: Kolkata GC was partnered with Voice of World in empowering women and the disabled through education and job opportunities for them to be able to participate in society.  Kahaani is a fundraising event through the GC. Doing this show not only made me more passionate about dancing but also had relevance to real world problems on a global scale. This being said, I’m glad I was able to participate in this show because of that factor.