RPI dance team defeats Siena for Desi title

Where do you get a sashay of colors, Indian cuisine, and a battle between colleges? Well, the scene I’m talking about here would have to be at West Hall, where Desi Dhamaka 2006 took place. Sponsored by Mayura Arts and Raas Entertainment, Desi Dhamaka is an annual dance competition involving a number of different schools.

Mixing American contemporary music and the traditional Indian dances, this year’s event began with a great start. The first to hit the stage was one of RPI’s dance teams, wearing costumes of cool blue to yellow. The crowds whistled and cheered the first dancers on. In fact, you could hear the RPI inhabitants supporting their home team.

A round of applause, and the next team was introduced. A great big cheer pervaded the room, and people like me wondered just what non-RPI team could cause such uproar. I got a response rather quickly.

Siena College, previous Desi Dhamaka champions, lived up to their name, and gave quite a vivacious performance. They even performed a series of somersaults and ended their dance with a human pyramid (or a version of one anyway).

The next dance came from SUNY Albany. The men performed with swords and the women showed off their basket-balancing skills. Albany also ended with their own version of a pyramid—of course, one of the guys actually made his way up to wave from the top.

At that point, the crowds started to divide itself into a sort of rivalry. Chants of “RPI” and “Siena” were screamed out as loud as the crowd could make it. They were certainly making their favorite choices known before the judging round.

In the second round of dancing (after a slight intermission), it was time to unleash RPI’s second team to rival the glamour and skill of Siena College’s. RPI danced to a traditional folk dance with a combination of classical to it—an honor to the Hindu gods of old. Their performance certainly gave Siena College a run for their money, it was pleasantly entertaining, to boot.

To end the competition, Siena College’s own Hypnotic dance team performed a contemporary piece. I personally found their rendition to the Sesame Street remix interesting (if not hilarious).

So who actually won the dance-off? Well, for starters, a re-cap: the competition was between the two RPI teams, a team from SUNY Albany, and former champions from Siena College.

Let’s just say, “There’s no place like home.” Particularly when RPI’s second team impressed the judges enough to beat even glamorous Siena.

In the end, I can’t say that everyone went home happy, but there was certainly one girl who was joyous enough, especially when she won the day’s raffle prize: an iPod Nano!