Mara Goldstein (C’27) is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences from Pearl City, Hawai’i studying Justice & Peace Studies and English.
The stage lights darken as the Raas group exits the stage. We run onto the wooden floors of Gaston, the girls careful not to trip over the elaborate pants that make every spin look magical. “Suave Taal!” one of the dancers yells once we get into our triangular formation. “Yeah, we ball!” Every dancer yells back with as much energy as we can muster, and then the performance begins.
Suave Taal is just one dance group that performs as a part of Georgetown Rangila, an annual philanthropic South Asian dance showcase that raises thousands of dollars for charity. For this year’s 30th Rangila, the money went to the Little Sisters Fund, an organization that provides programs supporting the education of young girls in Nepal.
Every year, hundreds of Georgetown students with and without any dance experience sign up to spend three hours of their week learning a new dance created by three student choreographers. I was extremely lucky to get into my first choice dance: the Latin and Bollywood fusion Suave Taal.
Every Tuesday from 9 p.m. to midnight, my fellow dancers and I forgot about the rest of our lives and took pleasure in moving our bodies to the musical mashup. For everyone in my dance, those Tuesday nights became the highlight of our weeks. No matter what assignments I had or what state my mind was in, I never skipped a practice. Being a part of Rangila helped me to realize how much I loved and missed dancing as someone with years of experience doing hula and musical theater.
One of the best parts of Rangila was getting to be a part of such a huge community on campus. To raise money for the Little Sisters Fund, Rangila held several fundraising events, including collaborations with local cafes and open mic nights. I even performed a couple of songs with a friend who choreographed Bulldog Bhangra, the dance that started Rangila thirty years ago. All of the philanthropic events made every dancer feel like they were a part of something much larger than themselves.
By the time of the performance week, I had spent hours daily with the people in my dance, and we quickly became extremely close. My favorite part of performing has always been everything outside of the performance — helping other people with their makeup, singing the musical mix together when we want to practice the dance without our phones, hyping up our friends in other dances and sharing our stories and lives together. With the extra time we had, we would eat, chat and dance, both practicing for our performances and moving shamelessly to other Bollywood classics.
