A New Vancouver Competition Brings The Ancient Punjabi Dance Form To The Next Generation

It's a drizzly October night, and Vancouver International Bhangra Competition executives are entertaining 300 dinner guests at a Surrey banquet hall. They're enlisting support for their ambition to vault bhangra--a centuries-old Punjabi folk dance and music enjoying a modern revival--into the local mainstream. Unlike previous events that were geared toward the South Asianí‚ ­Canadian community, the nonprofit, volunteer-run VIBC is seeking international participants and multicultural audiences in the hope of establishing an annual event on par with the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival. (Similar showdowns already exist in U.S. cities like Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.) As a fortuitous sign, the flashy live performances and infectious beats have everyone on the dance floor before evening's end.

The persuasion has paid off. The competition, set for next Saturday (January 22) at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts (see www.vibc.org/), has secured numerous sponsors, including The Beat 94.5 FM and Channel M, with a first prize of $5,000. Twenty-five applications from across North America were whittled down to 10 qualifying teams based on criteria such as style, technical performance, and traditional elements. "It's probably the most difficult thing we've had to do as an executive," VIBC public-relations chair Sukhi Ghuman says of the selection process.

Attracting a mainstream audience is the next hurdle. "We're hoping to build awareness of bhangra so in Vancouver it thrives throughout, so it's not just limited to South Asians," Ghuman explains by phone. Working with Tourism Vancouver, VIBC also hopes to raise the city's profile: "We want to make this a milestone for Vancouver, to show that we are a very diverse, multicultural community yet able to work together, promote our cultures, educate our neighbours, and share it with them."

Although its beats and moves are accessible to generations reared on music videos and aerobics, bhangra also has a long history that originates in the Punjab--a region of northern India and northeast Pakistan--around the 1400s (although the form may date back to 300 BC). Farmers performed it while working in the fields, and it became a part of the harvest festival Vaisakhi and other celebrations. The basic 4/4 beat (keerva) is kept by the dhol, a large barrel-shaped drum suspended by a strap around the player's neck. The movements--from hand-clapping and wrist-twisting to kicking and shoulder-shrugging--are energetic, expressive, and often illustrative of the lyrics, which are about everything from daily life to love to heroes and heroines.

When the departing British Empire divided the Punjab between India and Pakistan in 1947, a Sikh exodus ensued, and émigrés took traditions like bhangra with them. In the British club scene of the late '80s, DJs fused bhangra beats with electronic genres (house, techno, trance, drum 'n' bass), fostering the Asian underground scene and influencing pop artists from Bjíƒ ¶rk to Bananarama. International bhangra stars such as the U.K.'s Bally Sagoo and Apache Indian and Surrey's Jazzy Bains found fame among diaspora and motherland audiences. In '90s North America, bhangra blended with hip-hop, R & B, and reggae, and was even sampled in songs by Missy Elliott, Dr. Dre, and Britney Spears.

Ghuman, an ex-president of the UBC Bhangra Club, explains that bhangra also took root on college campuses. Ethnic clubs put on cultural shows that grew into competitions held during the academic year. In fact, some of the continent's top teams hail from the Lower Mainland, such as the UBC Girlz Bhangra who, along with the SFU Elite Bhangra Team, made the final VIBC cut. Yet while live music and singers accompany traditional bhangra performances, with an emphasis on authentic movements, North American teams, dancing to recorded mixes, often integrate moves from hip-hop, cheerleading, and gymnastics, including pyramids, rolls, and throws.

In reaction to these fusion styles, on-line message boards often feature debates about what bhangra is. Ghuman, however, recognizes the benefits of modern elements: "It's giving the younger generation who may not have known about bhangra that extra incentive to learn more about it. It's also giving teams who have the background, have been dancing for 30 or 40 years, and come from the state of Punjab the opportunity to educate the younger generation." Although many cultural art forms are facing extinction, the resurgence of bhangra--while both absorbing and exerting influences--is clearly a model example of a tradition adapting to our modern world.

Consequently, Ghuman hopes the VIBC will educate not only those outside the South Asian community but also members within the community, some of whom may not even speak the language: "A lot of dancers don't really know the specific terms for some moves, the different styles, or where they came from. We're trying to give them that information and let them leave Vancouver learning something that they can take back with them."

The Vancouver International Bhangra Competition takes place next Saturday (January 22) at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts.