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Indian Student Association hosts India Day

Event showcases varieties of South Asian music, culture in performances

<p>A dance group performing during India Day.</p>

A dance group performing during India Day.

The Indian Student Association hosted India Day — a three hour-long show to celebrate Indian and South Asian culture with performances by dance groups, a cappella groups and musicians representing different regions and styles — on March 25.

ISA President and fourth-year College student Priyal Gandhi said the event is open to both the University and Charlottesville community, and incorporates a variety of entertainment in the performance’s programming.

“India Day is a cultural showcase where we invite U.Va. students, Charlottesville community members, family members, students from other schools to come watch the show,” Gandhi said. “We have about 270 performers, we have year dances for first, second, third and fourth-years, three nationally competitive South Asian Dance Groups perform, a South Asian a capella group [and] a fashion show.”

Gandhi said ISA formally hosts the event, but partners with other University contracted independent organizations to bring the performance together.

Many of the performances in the show were by University organizations such as Ektaal, Virginia Di Shaan, U.Va. Sharaara, U.Va. Hoo Raas, Aaja Nachle and Sitaare. The event also included a guest performance by musician Musical Avish.

“We partner with about eight to nine different CIOs to put the show on, [and] what it does to for us to come together is pretty incredible,” Gandhi said. “Each CIO represents a different region or style of music or dance in South Asian cultures, so it is really nice to be able to bring those together in the same place, especially because our membership is religiously, culturally, nationally and regionally more diverse.”

Suhani Sanghavi, ISA Culture Co-Chair and a second-year Engineering student, said India Day also serves as a platform to partner with ISA’s charity groups — exercising one of ISA’s purposes of service.

“We have a lot of CIOs that work with us, and two of our main ones are our charity and service organizations that work with us every year — Asha for Education and Hera initiative are the two that we work the most with in terms of CIOs,” Sanghavi said. “We try to identify their goals and align them with ours and what we want ISA to represent as a service organization.”

The event was centered on the theme “Guess Hoo?”, which invited attendees to participate in activities to help solve a mystery.

Sanghavi said increasing interaction between the audience and performers is something ISA improves on for India Day each year.

“We tried this year to make it an inclusive, dynamic event, but we always try to make it more interactive with the audience and having them fully engaged,” Sanghavi said.

Gandhi said the theme was able to accomplish an interactive and narrative feel to the show, which was one reason why it was selected.

“Every year we have a lot of creative themes on the table, and this one had been floating around for a while, and we just hadn't gotten to it,” Gandhi said. “The idea was that we could incorporate a story within the show, and the mystery really lended itself to that.”

Gandhi and Sanghavi said they received positive feedback about this year’s India Day from those in attendance and from members participating in the performance.

“People were saying it was one of the best India Days — the show was very well run, the quality of performances exceeded expectations, the theme was great because we incorporated a mystery throughout our show and we are pretty well known around Grounds,” Gandhi said.

“We got a lot of positive feedback in terms of the diversity of our acts, and every detail was carefully executed — our audience was a good mix of the community, parents, faculty and other students from other schools,” Sanghavi said. “Coordinating it and seeing it onstage was one of the most rewarding experiences.”

Sanghavi said India Day also serves as a symbol of unity within the University community and can impact students of all backgrounds.

“We want to come together and show what the Indian culture means to us, what our heritage means to us, and we use India Day to express that,” Sanghavi said. “I think [because] ISA is easily one of the biggest CIOs on grounds, if we can present a united response, that would mean a lot to the community.” 

Correction: This article previously misquoted  Priyal Gandhi as saying there was an East Asian a capella group. It was a South Asian a capella group. 

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