Getting to know Chankaar: BU’s all-girl South Asian dance team

Shadows dance along a fiery red backdrop, moving perfectly in-sync and then suddenly, the lights turn on to reveal fourteen identically-dressed girls with dazzling smiles to match their gold-sequined tops.

She moves with grace and confidence with the rest of her team, occasionally flipping her blonde hair. No, she didn’t grow up listening to Bollywood hits and fawning over the latest Shahrukh Khan movie.

Sophomore Maddie Ross, a Neuroscience major, is the only non-South Asian on the South Asian dance team, and she sure as hell knows how to rock it.

Maddie at the latest Chankaar photoshoot by Shivani Patel

BU Chankaar is an all-girls fusion dance team. They integrate South Asian dance styles such as bharatnatyam, kathak, bhangra, folk and Bollywood with hip-hop and contemporary dance.

We sat down with Maddie about how she got involved with BU Chankaar and for a behind the scenes look into their competitions.

Do you have any prior dance experience?
I danced my entire childhood, studying tap, ballet, pointe, and jazz.

What made you want to try out for Chankaar?
I had done some research into BU’s dance teams before even arriving on campus.

During my senior year of high school, I went to another college’s open house, where I saw a cultural show and watched a bhangra team perform. I had never seen anything like it. The dancers’ faces were so expressive, and they just looked like they were having so much fun. I wanted to have that much fun!

I decided then that I really wanted to try to be on a South-Asian dance team in college, and Chankaar ended up being the perfect fit!

No article on Chankaar would be complete without featuring the Chank face!

As you probably know, South Asian dance teams are typically made up of a large majority of, well, South Asians. What’s it like being on a South Asian dance team and not being South Asian? 
As a Caucasian girl on a South Asian dance team, I learn something new everyday! I came from a small high school in Connecticut where everyone else had more or less the same background as me, so coming to BU and then joining Chankaar was a huge change for me.

But I’ve always felt incredibly welcomed. Obviously I look a little different on stage than the rest of my friends, and am not the first person to ask when we’re looking for a hit Bollywood song for our mix.

But Chankaar is a fusion dance team, which I think explains our dynamic perfectly. We have a mixture of music genres, dance styles, different strengths and talents, and different backgrounds. There’s no one word to describe our team, which I think is really neat.

So, even though most of the time I’m learning something new from the rest of the team, whether it’s who the latest, hottest Bollywood star is or proper hand placement for a classical segment in our dance, I also have some of my own talents and insights to bring to the team!

Chankaar at a dress rehearsal for a cultural show

How has your experience on Chankaar been so far?
My experience on Chankaar has been amazing. Last year was a whirlwind, with a steep learning curve, but through Chankaar I made some of my best friends and found my niche on campus. As a returning sophomore, I can’t wait for all this year has in store for us.

What’s it like keeping up with the practice schedule?
I personally find our practice schedule to be the perfect time commitment for me – enough to keep me busy and give me a break from studying, but not so much that I find my workload unmanageable. Sometimes competition weekends are tough, especially since we put so much time and practice into preparing, and school continues as usual, but we all manage to make it work and are able to maintain a balance between school, dance, and everything else we do on campus.

Do you guys have any quirky pre-competition rituals?
Sometimes of our pre-competition practices and rituals might look a little funny to an outsider. For instance, sometimes we practice an expression circle (which is when we go through the dance practicing our facial expressions instead of movements).

Last year we did this in full makeup and costume in a gazebo in the middle of George Washington University’s campus in Washington DC, blasting a mix featuring Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, and a lot of Hindi lyrics. Some bystanders were a little confused.