Raising Awareness About Punjabi Culture through Dance

During my junior year, I decided to try out for the UW Giddha team and luckily made the team for the year. Giddha is a popular folk dance for women in the state of Punjab located in northern India. Through this colorful dance, women creatively display feminine grace and sing stories of everyday events. I am one of the three new girls on the team and learned how to dance Giddha just this year. This shows that the team members put a lot of effort into teaching us and we put in just as much learning it. Being part of such a dynamic team is valuable to me as it brings me closer to my culture and lets me share it with others.

Through this opportunity, I have found that dancing and singing have become a passion of mine. It brings me much joy to have dance be a part of my daily life. Sharing my culture with others is something I also enjoy and especially doing this with such a dynamic team. All of my Giddha girls and I are symbolic of the power women hold. We sing our hearts out and show our physical strength through the stunts we do. We are all loud, proud and articulate with what we sing and the moves we do. With each song and dance, we translate what we are saying and show the audience the emotions of the song through our facial expressions. In this way, we share a piece of our Punjabi culture with our audience. 

Performances:

• SONA: 2016 SASA Heritage Dinner

• Operation Smile 6th Annual UW’s Got Talent

• VTSeva UTSAV: 4th Anniversary

• Desi Dhamaka 2016 at Meany Hall UW

Being a part of the UW Giddha team I have gained the leadership competency of  productive relationships. With my fellow eleven-team members, I have cultivated connections that contribute positively to the well-being of our team. We are highly creative, collaborative and in this way can make our practices further our team each time. My team members not only help us with Giddha but anything else in life that may be going on. We are a close team since we are so small but this only helps us be more effective and further ourselves in what we do.   

Another leadership competency I have gained through this ongoing experience is receiving feedback. When I first joined, I had no idea how to do the footwork, clapping or how to sing the songs. Foot and clapping for Giddha are of utmost importance as those are the main components that make up the style of dance. I received plenty of feedback as soon as I started and still continue to receive feedback that is constantly furthering my learning. This feedback helps me in becoming a better component of this dynamic team and helps me in teaching others what I have accomplished and learned.

I have also become an effective idea generator as we are always thinking of new ways to promote our team and in what ways to do this. The team is collaborative in our thinking since we each have our own opinions and suggestions to give. These suggestions and thinking are respected by all the team members and considered. We are constantly generating ideas for new dance routines, songs and maybe just what dance move to do for a specific routine.

Above all, I pride my team on overall excellence. This year we have gotten into every performance that we tried out for and now we are looking towards competing this summer. We each give our best effort to put forth the best possible work to make our families and fellow Punjabis proud. Knowing that everyone on the team is giving their all, provides us all an energetic boost during our actual performances. I am grateful for the  members of my team and how much work each of us put into something that holds so dear to our culture. 

I will make use of these leadership competencies as I continue being a part of UW Giddha my senior year. I hope to continue building on these skills as I will help new girls learn how to Giddha next year. I will be an effective leader as I gain more productive relationships with new girls and gain further feedback to be a better dancer. I look forward to meeting new individuals and helping out the 2017 UW Giddha team.