Fusion dance team reaches out to students

Fusing ballet pirouettes, hip-hop pumping, and South Asian dance choreography, CU Taal is seeking to fashion itself into a dynamic presence in Columbia’s dance scene.

CU Taal will host their ninth annual South Asian dance event, Naach Nation, this Saturday, March 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the Roone Auditorium. Six other college dance teams will join them for a dance showcase to raise money for CatarAct International’s public health initiatives and awareness about South Asian dance. Combining choreographic styles derived from diverse cultural moments, Taal is an active yet little-known group on campus.

Taal is especially concerned about attendance at Naach Nation, which has witnessed low numbers of students in years past in contrast to comparable campus events. “I think that people sometimes might not find it as pumpy,” Srilekha Jayanthi, treasurer of Taal, said. “The club hopes to build a greater audience base by competing more often.”

The club is an entertainment fixture on campus, performing for South Asian events, college days, NSOP, Global Health, relay for life, and multicultural and philanthropic events. “We do a lot of small performances on campus,” said Jayanthi, “We have like a dance performances almost every day in April.”

Taal’s combination of traditional Asian dance with modern American dance forms contributes to the club’s imprecise identity. “We take classical styles of dance from different regions of India,” Taal member Maya Mukhopadhaya, CC ‘10, said. “And then we try to incorporate that with ballet and modern and hip hop sometimes—very western contemporary styles.”

By employing varied dance forms, the club may have limited their audience’s ability to connect to them. “I’ve never heard of them,” Jorda Kovash, CC ‘13, said. “There should be more of a connection between students and dance clubs like Taal.”

Taal dancers plan to use their varied dance styles to produce “elation,” their club’s theme for the 2010 event. Emphasizing their wish to be a positive presence on campus, Jayanthi said of elation, “We wanted to find a way to find those moments in each style, and put them together to make us all feel that way, and to make the audience feel that way, hopefully.”

The club maintains this positive attitude by connecting to other dance organizations on campus in order to engender solidarity. As Jayanthi said, “Columbia has a very strong dance culture, and all the teams are very supportive of each other.”