Oracle Diwali videos
Yeah! We finally have some videos of the Bollywood dance performances at the Oracle Diwali celebration.
Here’s the video from Desi Girl performance:
and Here’s the video from Marjaani performance:
All Oracle employees and family members are welcome to take Bollywood dance class at Oracle on Fridays at 3 pm, see you then!
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!
Bollywood Medley at GoogleMela
Special thanks to this awesomely fun group of dancers who dedicated so much of their time to learn this long and challenging choreography. The performance at GoogleMela was well received, and I can’t believe you learned so much in just 5 weeks.
I enjoyed laughing with the dancers as we figured out the King and Queen lifts for Marjaani, how many times to run in a circle for Aaja Nachle, helping me understand the lyrics to Desi Girl, learning how to jump and push your hands up for Mauja hi Mauja, and such enthusiasm for the ending of Deewangi Deewangi. You guys were a really fun group to work with – looking forward to many more fun evenings of poker, monopoly, movies, and food!
Google Oktoberfest Performances
The culinary team strikes again with another great party at Google – this time celebrating the German Oktoberfest. The culinary team had great food, great beer, some cute beer hostesses to serve the beer, an impressive 20 piece German brass band… and US!
I enjoyed choreographing three dances for our performances, and wrangled up three different teams of dancers to perform.
I was super proud of our newbie polka group – most of these dancers had never danced polka before, and they did such a great job! They learned this routine in just 3 weeks. Thanks to Piyush for extra costume prep, and to Robin for sticking around to Emcee!
At the afternoon lull we performed a Lady’s Landler Waltz. This one incorporated redowa, mazurka, and waltz steps (as well as some folk dance figures) and a whole lot of cuteness. Shouts out to Katie for being an incredibly hair braider, and thanks to Deb for rushing back to town to learn this and the help with the choreography wraps. Thank you to Merry for pulling it all together!!
And last but certainly not least, we performed a Zweifacher. This is a crazy difficult kind of dance that mixes waltzes and pivots to match the uneven timing in the music. It also has lots and lots of spinning that makes all the dancers dizzy as well! I was very impressed with how well Christina, Paul, Tina, Daniel, and Scott handled this challenging choreography – they even got compliments from the traditional German band who were impressed that they tackled a Zweifacher. Whoot!
Thanks again to culinary for the commission to perform and assistance with costumes, and thank you to all who turned out to watch the show!
Oktoberfest at Google – this Thursday
Hey Googlers (and friends of Googlers),
The Google culinary team is putting on a party – which means, it’s gonna be good!
This Thursday from noon to four there will be beer, German food, a real live 20 piece German oom-pah oom-pah band, and…. DANCERS!
Yes, we’ve been rehearsing for a big phat 3 weeks to put together some German dancing to perform.
I have a rocking group of 5 couples dancing at polka at 1 pm, a cute cute group of 4 girls dancing Landler at 2 pm, and a very dizzy group of 3 couples dancing Zweifacher at 3 pm. Right after the last dance I will be taking the microphone to teach *everyone* how to polka.
So if you wanna see us dance around in Lederhosen and cute German dresses (or both, in my case), or teach or learn some basic polka steps, come out to Crittenden this Thursday!
See you soon,
Anna
Oracle Diwali Performance
Hi all!
So I’m very excited that we are going to be participating in this year’s Diwali performance.
We will be practicing for on Sundays for the next few weeks, for Desi Girl at 1:30 pm, Marjaani at 3 pm.
Here are a few videos to get you started on the steps:
Desi Girl:
Group 1 Steps:
Group 1 with Music:
Group 2 Steps:
Marjaani Steps:
Marjaani More info on Steps:
Marjaani with Music:
The dance captain for Desi Girl is Vidya Tiru is for Marjaani is Cristal Tsang. They will be contacting you all soon to set up your rehearsals for during the week. I know that many of you are excited to dance in both numbers, but do be aware that there will be lots of rehearsals. If you think you will not be able to go to all the rehearsals, you might want to pick just one dance to perform.
Thank you all for your great energy and fun style, I will see you Friday at 3 pm for class, and review of the steps directly after.
Zumba class performs at GoogleMela
Every Friday at 5 pm I teach a Zumba class (latin cardio dance mix) at Google.
I was super proud of these 5 ladies who were brave enough to perform a cumbia from class onstage at GoogleMela! As part of this International Cultural Festival they were representing Columbia / Venezuela – the home of cumbia.
Particular thanks to Susan for dealing (repeatedly) with costumes, as well as Debby and Katie for making up a partner dance part when I never gave you one! Thank you to Minya for dancing in multiple numbers and helping keep the group together, and a particular thank you to Zhongli for being so brave to perform.
See you all in class!
Gita and I dance at GoogleMela
Gita Hodell, you’re my hero!
It’s so great to work with a professional who is such a talented dancer, choreographer, and all around fun person to work with. If you want to find Gita for private lessons, please contact me and I can get you in touch with her. Or you can find her through Cheryl Burke / Starlite Studio.
I hope you all enjoyed watching our Afro-Haitian inspired Salsa, here it is again in case you missed it:
We mixed two songs together for this number, the first is “La Medina” off of Rumbagitation by Fatal Mambo, the second is “Elegante” by Orixas.
Thanks, Gita, for rehearsing with me so that we could dance at GoogleMela!
Want to see it again? Comments below!
GFit Around the World Class Performance
Every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 pm, I have a class at Google called “Around the World”. I’ve long loved world dance, and I really enjoy this excuse to practice, learn, and choreograph lots of new dance styles. When it came to GoogleMela showtime, this class voted on which of the many dance styles they wanted to perform. The two that came out on top – cha cha and tango. We ended up doing cha cha (as it’s a little more performance friendly). We then had to pick from the four cha cha’s that we’ve learned this year. After much deliberation (actually just one class worth’s of dancing and voting), we ended up with this piece. It was originally supposed to be both guys and girls… I dunno why the guys didn’t have time to come to practice. But the class is open to guys! I swear! Please come!
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The song, “In These Shoes” by Kirsty MacColl has great lyrics. In fact the whole album, “Tropical Brainstorm” is great. Pretty rare that a whole album is good.
The ladies partner up for cha cha time – by the way, we do not do partner dancing in class. The class is meant to be fun and really good cardio workout.
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Shouts out to Karina, our costume lead, who shopped around for these great skirts. You know you’re a dancer when you dance around in the dressing room to see how the skirt will flow. =)
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A big thank you to our photographer, Rebecca Dowell Mashhadian, who knows when the crosssover break is coming. It helps to have a photographer who used to be a professional dance instructor!
We worked a lot on getting into character for this piece. I think Lei got there for this photo.
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The only problem with interns is that they go away. We miss you Kristin!
Love Mera Hit Hit Performance
The very brave crew who performed Love Mera Hit Hit from Billu Barber for all their coworkers and friends at Google!
These folks are were part of the GFit Bollywood dance class (6 week special series), and they come out extra to practice this dance for the GoogleMela performance.
Special thank you to Jimmy and Mike who joined up so that Scott and Sahil could stop worrying about whether they would be the only guy.
Also shouts out to Christine who would have done a lovely job in the show but had a last minute emergency and couldn’t participate. Next time!
Also special thank you to my good friend, Deb Henigson, who choreographed these dance moves originally – before I got ahold of them and changed them up!
By the way, if you haven’t yet seen the original video that goes with this music, the costumes are awesomely hilarious and worth viewing.
Jimmy, Mike, Scott, and Sahil get the choreography started.
So much punching in this choreography!
Pose! (awesome photos by Rebecca Dowell Mashhadian – good job with a substitute camera!)
Aprajita, Anna, Prachi, and Ruchita have flying hair!
