University of Wisconsin-Madison students hosted an annual South Asian dance competition Saturday night, drawing hundreds of attendees to watch teams from across the United States perform choreographed South Asian Fusion dances.
The competition, Aa Dekhen Zara (ADZ), showcased eight teams from states as far away as New York and Texas in a packed Shannon Hall. The teams, who were selected out of over 70 teams who applied, performed eight-to-10 minute choreographed dances designed to tell a story through videography, movements and routine.
ADZ is traditionally Wisconsin’s largest Indian dance competition and one of the largest in the Midwest. This year marked the 15th year of ADZ, whose name translates to “Come Take a Look” in Hindi.
“ADZ has been one of my favorite parts of being at UW,” ADZ Philanthropy Chair Amanjot Kaur told The Daily Cardinal. “It's such an affirming space because Bollywood Fusion dance combines both our South Asian identity and our American identity through contemporary dance and hip hop and rap music, but also classical and Bhangra, and all of these different parts of us that are showcased in the world of dance and music.”
The competing teams used a combination of props, costuming and homemade edits mixing pop culture and hard-hitting Indian beats to support the stories they were trying to tell.
Each performance consisted of a series of dance numbers, broken up by contextual videos consisting of snippets of film and original dialogue projected onto the back of the stage. The first team to perform, UTD Raftaar from the University of Texas-Dallas, portrayed the origin story of Charlie Chaplin in two main dance numbers.
“We won nationals last year, and our theme was zombies,” UTD Raftaar dancer Antony Sajesh told the Cardinal. “This year we wanted to do something a little bit more lighthearted, and more comedic.”
Sajesh and the other 32 members of UTD Raftaar spent up to seven or eight hours per day practicing after winter break, sometimes holding 14-hour bootcamps. The competitive teams all train to compete in dance competitions like ADZ and are awarded points based on each performance.
Eventually, the 10 teams with the most points will compete at Legends, which is held in Charlotte, North Carolina in April this year. For Sajesh, dancing competitively allowed him to build community and connect to a part of his culture that he hadn’t previously invested as much time in.
“I would've never considered myself a dancer,” Sajesh told the Cardinal. “Until now, I think it was never something that was a big part of my life, but whenever we would have events at church, or cultural events like in my community, you’d do an Indian dance.”
Winners were selected by a panel of judges with extensive dance experience. In first place was ATL Satrangi, a group from Georgia Tech who designed a horror story featuring a vampire, a ballerina, a clown, Annabelle and a bride. Other members wore red-splotched shirts, simulating blood. Like other groups, ATL Satrangi designed and recorded a video featuring members of the troupe, dialogue and Indian-mixed pop beats.
Proceeds from the show were donated to ADZ’s philanthropic partner, the Indian American Cancer Network, which provides resources and financial support to people of South Asian descent who have been diagnosed with cancer. ADZ also ran an on-site blood and bone marrow donation registry with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In addition to these events, ADZ also hosts an annual gala to raise funds for their philanthropic partner.
“There's a gap and inequity in access to treatment for South Asians and minorities in general,” Kaur said. “That gap is even worse for Black and Latinx communities, but it's also apparent in the South Asian community, largely because of a lot of taboos that keep people from getting registered to donate blood or bone marrow, which is pretty challenging and harmful.”
UW-Madison students say dancing is ‘source of joy’
Four non-competing exhibition teams from UW-Madison also participated in ADZ: Wisconsin Waale, an acapella group, and South Asian dance groups Wisconsin Rangde, Wisconsin Surma and Wisconsin VIRA. VIRA, an Indian classical dance group, debuted at ADZ three years ago with seven members and now has around 20.
“While we do want to cater to the audience, we always keep the structure and integrity of classical dance,” said Michelle Shaji, a VIRA co-captain who received a BA in Bharatanatyam from a 7-year intensive dance academy in Gujarat, India. “We retain that as much as possible. So even if we're doing mainstream modern music, we'll often add certain pieces called jathis that are purely classical dancing.”
The name VIRA translates to “strength” in Sanskrit, according to Sahana Prasad, VIRA founder and co-captain.
VIRA performs many styles of Indian dance, primarily Bharatanatyam, a traditional North Indian dance, and Kathak, traditionally South Indian. Both forms of dance are deeply rooted in Indian and Hindu culture. The captains, all of whom come from a background of Bharatanatyam, took a class together at UW-Madison the previous semester to improve their Kathak.
“When I go to dance and when I have those two hours that I'm just with my people, I feel so good. Yes, it is dance, but it's also the community that we've built… I can just let go, and I feel so much more refreshed afterwards,” Shaji said.
The members work together during practice two times a week to try new choreography, which they create collaboratively, and rehearse old formations for upcoming performances.
“[VIRA] is a source of joy,” said Siya Mahajan, junior and co-captain who, like other captains, has been dancing classically since the age of five or six. “We laugh and have so much fun at practice and we are constantly challenged, not only by each other but by our dancers. We are pushed by our dancers. We push them. Community is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best, parts of being in VIRA.”
VIRA still has fond memories from their first ADZ performance and looks forward to future years of the event.
“We wouldn't be able to do what we do if we didn't have a community that backed Indian dance in all its forms,” Prasad said. “The first time we performed [at ADZ], so many people that we didn't even know came up to us… and that being a debut performance, something that we had worked together on for so long — it just felt so incredible that we were supported by such incredible people.”
A recording of ADZ 2025 can be found on YouTube.
