photo credit & permission to print: Pawan Medidi
The lights shine down on them as sweat drips down their face. Their heart beats loudly like a drum in their chest as grins stretch down their cheeks. Standing on a stage in front of hundreds as the applause becomes defeaning. This is a typical weekend for the OSU Origins dance team.
The OSU Origins is an all-male competitive Bollywood fusion dance team. The team is a relatively new as it was only founded in 2021. They are a group containing 29 members, most attending OSU and a few members who are out of state or seniors in Highschool.
“I’ve been dancing for Indian events since my childhood but I’ve never been a part of a dance team until this year,” a member of Origins and OOHS graduate Sharva Deodhar said.
In their previous season, they won first place at the Legends dance championship, a competition with over 150 other South Asian college dance teams over America. The team dressed up as jokers for their dance theme as they incorporated three styles of dance; hip-hop, Bhangra, and South Indian.
“Origins is special because the whole team is very tight-knit, and everyone is close with one another,” Origins member and Orange alumnus Shukanth Jojodae said.
Due to the success of the team in previous seasons, popularity of the team spread quicky across campus. Because of this, more people showed up to their tryouts than years prior.
Before the school year, they have a couple of workshops open to any interested male where they teach some basic choreography used in the team. After the various workshops, they hold auditions for spots in front of the captains.
“Our focus this year will definitely be to focus on developing our technical dance fundamentals and stage presence since we are a younger team this year,” sophomore captain Suriya Saravanan said.
Origins had their first competition of this season in Atlanta Georgia on Nov. 18. Even with half of the team being completely new members, and some living out of state, they still won 4th place.
“The progress we made with the lack of experience our team had this year proves that we have a lot of upsides for the spring season,” Origins member Visher Ramuni said.
Members of the team all have personal goals for the season, whether it’s improving on a style they were struggling with or the intensity of the choreography. And the overall goal for the team to accomplish this season, is to compete in the Legends competition and once again win 1st place.
“I want to help live up to the expectations that people hold for Origins because they won nationals last year,” Jojodae said.
Practice ranges from 2 to 3 days a week, with each practice being around 2 hours each. However the closer it gets to a competition, they practice almost every day for around 6 hours. Their second competition of the season is set place to be this upcoming Feburary.
“Some personal goals I have for myself is to become better at hiphop dancing and maybe even choreo some moves at some point,” Deodhar said.
Inspired by what’s currently popular or already well known, the team comes up with songs and themes that will catch the eye of the audience and make them more aware of their dancing. They base those factors onto the costumes and mood for the dance. In their dance as jokers last year, they also added scenes of movies with the joker on a screen in the background as they danced.
“Origins is important to me because of the brotherhood and the experience of dancing on stage with my friends. The rush of dancing on stages with hundreds of people watching you was nothing like I’ve ever experienced, and I was hooked from the first time I stepped on stage,” Saravanan said.
