Diwali Dandia and Garba Performance

Thanks to the IGN for inviting me to help out with Diwali 2009 at Google – there were many aspects to the Diwali celebration:   IGN made a beautiful display of candles in the shape of temples and stars all over Charlie’s Patio, great food in Charlie’s cafe, and of course, dancing!

We had only 2 weeks to put together a dandia / garba performance.  At first we were just going to demonstrate a few interesting dandia patterns, and then teach dandia.  But it developed into a whole four song medley and choreography – it’s always hard to “Keep it Simple!”   Thank you to Ramya, Sugeeti, and Jatin for helping me find the right music to edit together (and thank you to the group for putting up with my rough draft edits!)  Thank you to Sahil for helping remind me to K.I.S.S. whenever possible.  =)  Also thank you to Jatin, Vandana, Piyush, Sugeeti, and all the dancers who gave great suggestions for the choreography / dandia and garba patterns.

Big thank you to Vandana, Meghna, and Sai for helping organize costumes.  The jewelry for the ladies was so much fun!  I don’t think I’ve ever had so much volume of jewelry on at the same time!