In art as in love, instinct is enough...!

Music and dance has always fascinated me in many ways and I am very passionate about these two art forms.
Many concerts and dance shows I have attended to fulfill this desire of mine. One evening was today where I got to watch Berkeley Bollywood 2017.

I had heard about it but only today I could go because my friend's daughter was participating in the dance competition from her university UCSC and I was here for supporting her.

If you have visited the Paramount Theater of Arts, in Oakland you will love any art that is performed in this theater. Its very beautiful and I really admired for Berkeley to organize such an event where inter-universities get to participate to compete with each other by performing bollywood dances.

All the dances were great and some were really great. It reminded me of my school days where students from different schools would participate and compete and in doing so we used to make so many friends. That's the exact feel I got from this evening. Berkeley's Indus is formed by students and they organized it very well.

There were students from SJSU, USD, UW, USC, UCD, UCI, UCSC, CAL POLY and Berkeley. The best thing I enjoyed was the students were of today's generation who grew up in America and the songs that they were performing were on Indian songs. It was amazing to see how they articulate and translate the feelings and emotions of Hindi film songs in their dances. I felt proud to see these kids performing apt with the songs and the themes of their stories.

Every university presented a story that was close to everyone's heart. One was on depression, the other was on drugs, abuse, loneliness without family, the cultural changes with generation gaps and above all even though Berkeley didn't participate in the competition being the host, they were the best. I loved their three performances out of which one was bhangra, other was a dance choreographed in such a way where the doctors are treating different patients with different issues - one was an ambitious dancer who fractures her leg, another young woman coming for her delivery and she has a cesarean, one of them with cancer, another one husband with bipolar and he comes with wife for counseling and how each scenario they handle into a happy ending performance. 

Every story was powerful and the way they expressed it was amazing as it was their creativity which made all stories unique and touching to the hearts. There were moments where it made my eyes teary. It was amazing to see how everyone used props, costumes that they changed while they are performing and how many stunts and lifts each team did.
This made me feel like going back to college, even for mere fun things it's worth thought ;)

The best performance was UCD and to be frank it was one person who took all the load and he also got the individual male lead award too which spoke a lot about his talent as he was the choreographer as well. Amazing and power packed evening which will keep my mind and heart busy with happiness for long.

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I,  an artist will answer you: I am here to live out loud"

~ Dawn