Stage Set On Fire by the Wonderful Students of DPSNM!

On Friday, 28th April 2023, an Inter House Dance Competition was held at Delhi Public School, Navi Mumbai. The presenters- Ruhani Mahendra and Ananya Bhardwaj started the program with a welcoming message and stated the rules of the contest.

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The Rules:

Every team must have over 8 and less than 14 participants. The dance should be based on one of the major social causes of our society and the duration should be about 4 to 6 minutes. Keeping these rules in mind, the competition started with the recital of a beautiful prayer!

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Team 1: Jhelum

Rage-Momentful-Impactful

This performance was a combination of 3 classical dances, Kathak, Bharatnatyam, and Odissi. Their theme was women empowerment and the performance depicted the story of a mother who had lost her child and was filled with rage and anger, ultimately taking the role of goddess Kali. This was performed beautifully by the Kathak dancers. With the story continuing, the Bharatnatyam dancers expressed the mother's rage as similar to how Mahishasur was slain by the goddess Durga. This anger of the mother also portrayed how she was fed up with facing judgement and discrimination on the basis of her gender. Finally, Lord Shiva entered the scene, to calm down her rage. All classical dancers entered during this scene. The moral of this performance was to not take a woman's anger lightly, and that her call against discrimination must not be ignored.

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Team 2: Ganga

Intense-Passionate-Defiant

This performance had an interesting story. The first scene began when a girl wants to pursue education, but is denied this right. Later, as she fell asleep, the rest of the dancers of the team appeared in her dream. They motivated her and gave her the strength to defend her pride and integrity. There were many songs taken such as 'Ayagiri Nandini' in which they used the line 'Mahishasura Mardini' which depicted the slaying of Mahishasura by Goddess Durga, which symbolized the wrath and anger of the girl. As the song went on, many great female leaders and idols were shown in the performance, such as Rani Laxmi Bai and Kalpana Chawla to motivate and instill courage in the girl. In the end, when she finally woke up, she had acquired the courage to stand up for herself! The dance was a defiant protest against discrimination against women, acid attacks, and rape.

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Team 3: Chenab

Mukta - The Rising

This performance shed light on how girls in schools get judged, bullied, and harassed. As the curtains opened we saw a girl being demotivated, demeaned, and publically shamed by society for exercising her right to go to school. Later, the girl goes into a state of breakdown, and the bullies start to further humiliate her. However, in the following sequence, the song 'Bezubaan Kab Se' plays, displays the desire of women to raise their voices and revolt against discrimination. Ultimately, the bullies realize their mistake and accept that they were wrong in bullying, harassing, and demeaning the girl. This was a beautiful way to portray how society can change its opinion on certain topics such as the contribution of women in various fields.

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Team 4: Yamuna

Solemn-Tragic

This performance attempted to instill awareness in the audience about the ill effects of bullying. In the story, there are 6 friends who split up into two factions because of one faction trying to bully the other. The dancers dressed in black represented the bullies while the dancers in white are their victims. The victims desperately screamed for help in the hopes of being heard as the bullies continued to oppress them. The performance was incredibly dynamic and acrobatic. Unfortunately, this story did not have a happy ending as one of the victims sadly succumbed to the constant bullying and died. This performance ended on a sad note and aimed to create awareness about youth issues.

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Team 5: Ravi

Individualism-Dignity-Harms of social media

This topic was rather interesting and relatively uncovered in our country-individualism and self-respect. The performance showed the importance of the integrity of one's character and maintaining one's dignity. Whenever someone tries to encroach upon our rights and freedom, we should stand up against it. There were many such key messages artistically portrayed within the performance. The following part of the dance talks about the harmful effects of addiction to social media. The dancers are shown engrossed in their phones, unable to leave them for even a moment. Finally, the characters realize their mistakes and become aware of their increasing dependence on their devices and social media, and in the realization of what is happening to them, throw away their phones off the stage, and gain freedom from their addiction.

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Team 6: Sutlej

drug addiction-substance abuse

This performance was based on an issue that is prevalent in a large section of the youth of our country, which was 'Drugs and Substance Abuse'. The dance tried to portray the problem by taking an example of a few friends in which one of them under peer pressure, trying to be 'hip', tries drugs once but later cannot resist the temptation of taking them again and using them on a regular basis. She tries multiple times to gain freedom from her addiction, but in vain, as she simply cannot resist the urge of consuming drugs. At this point, drugs had begun to call the shots in her life and she was close to ruin. But at the last moment, her friends intervened, forcing her into rehab which eventually resulted in her overcoming her addiction and regaining her freedom from drugs, and becoming a better person. The dance stresses a really important topic which is 'The Harmful Effects of Drugs and Substance Abuse' and how it can ruin one's life. The dance ends on a positive note as it shows it is never too late for one to repent and amend one's prior errors

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Results:

The competition was intense and it was incredibly difficult for the judges to rank the teams. However, after heavy consideration of the respected judges, here are the winners:

1st position- Yamuna

2nd position- Chenab

3rd position- Jhelum

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Summary

All the teams put up wonderful performances with beautiful choreography, and engaging stories, and every performance made sure to deliver an important social message to the audience so as to raise awareness about these various issues. All the participants worked really hard and put in a lot of effort in putting on such a wonderful show for the audience. However, it was observed, contradictory to expectations, that some of the performances revolved around the same social issue, giving a similar theme to a few dances. Still, the performers did a wonderful job of depicting these causes in different styles.

The Verconor team really enjoyed the coverage of the program and would love to be appointed as the reporters for future programs as well.

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