Tamasha Bollywood dance team starts practices

Photo by Annika Muju

Members of Saratoga High’s Tamasha meet on Oct. 16 to learn a partner dance, choreographed by Annika Muju and Ojas Somani.

The Indian Cultural Awareness Club (ICAC) hosted tryouts for the school’s Bollywood dance team — known as Tamasha — in early September, with four new girls and four new boys joining the team. Altogether, the team now has 14 members.

Since 2017, Tamasha has competed in various dance competitions outside of school. Each year, they also perform a specialty act for ICAC’s annual Bombay in the Bay (BnB) fundraiser show in February.

During the tryouts, each person performed a partner’s dance along with an individual dance (girls or guys). Members were chosen by senior captains Annika Muju and Ojas Somani along with co-captains senior Anand Agrawal and junior Shyla Bhandari, who assist the captains with choreography.

This year, Tamasha has no freshmen or sophomores. The seniors are Agrawal, Stuti Agarwal, Isha Jagadish, Ishir Lakhani, Ela Machiroutu, Muju, Maya Singla, Varun Shah and Somani. The juniors are Bhandari, Avik Belenje, Raghav Chakravarthi, Kavya Patel and Joshua Ta. 

After BnB, the team will apply to different competitions at local schools. This year, Muju and Somani aim to apply to 10 different competitions.

“The team submits videos of dances we learned throughout the year to different competition organizations, and if the organizers like our skill and choreography, we are allowed to compete in the actual competition,” Muju said.

. Shyla Bhandari has been on the team for two years, and was the only sophomore on Tamasha last year. Bhandari has been learning Bollywood dance starting at age 4.

“This year, I think we have a higher chance of qualifying for competitions because we started auditions earlier, which gives the captains more time to prepare choreography, and the team members more time to practice,” she said.

The team doesn’t have a set practice schedule, but they typically occur on every other Sunday. As BnB approaches, practices will be at least once a week, she said. 

Captains have been trying to get more involved with events outside of the school as well as get a head start on choreography. This year, more competitions will be open for students to enter because COVID-19 cases are finally decreasing, and wearing masks while dancing isn’t mandatory anymore.

“It’s hard to qualify for competitions because there are so many other competing teams, so there’s definitely more work to be done,” Bhandari said.

In general, the team’s goal this year is to have fun learning new dances and songs.

“Tamasha is truly a way for people to feel part of a community and build friendships with people who share the same passion for dance as you do,” Bhandari said.