Veeragaase in Seattle

By | April 15, 2019

Learning is the beginning of wealth, health and spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process starts.

Story of how it all started?

Just like the above quote, I and my team got to experience the magic. I started my search for something but I never knew we would be making history.

Of course, it wasn’t just me who did, it was the entire Veeragaase team who performed in Sahyadri Kannada Sangha’s Ugadi event 2019, Seattle, USA.

Its always a challenge to recreate something from your home town in a faraway land and this time I decided to take up a huge task which was no less than a uphill climb. I decided I would make a team and lead a folk dance form from Karnataka, Veeragaase with only four weeks in hand.

After doing a lot of research and hearing to a lot of versions of Khadga Pravachana, I had a full sequence on paper, but finding dancers was a challenge cause all the other dancers had already formed their group and others were unavailable.

So had second doubt’s and then came my all time supporter, my husband who said don’t stop, let’s start doing if it happens, good or else we will get to learn something new. Then in no time we had formed a group and started practicing.

We performed Veeragaase dance while narrating the story of Lord Veerabhadra’s birth in a pravachan form.

Story continues:

Practicing something all together new, was very difficult. Usually Veeragaase is performed with live music, but that is something which is far from recreation and we decided to go ahead with a recorded music bit which I found online.

But dancing to just continuous beats which all sound same was the biggest challenge. Some days when everyone picked it, at right beat it felt we are heading right and some days it felt a difficult ride.

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Challenges:

The challenge was just not the music but also recreating the costumes, accessories and make-up.We did do a costume and makeup rehearsal to record the time we took to get ready.

Another biggest challenge was to narrate the story after dancing and we had to practice innumerable times to get the timing and dialogue right, loud and clear.

But then just like the saying Luck favours the brave, we could do everything in house in Seattle. It was a learning process in whole.

Event Day:

And here it was, the event Day we were all set and we just went ahead and gave our best shot. It was a proud moment cause it was the first time that the Seattle witnessed Veeragaase.

After the Event:

Four weeks went pass so fast and now there is a certain part within myself empty, satisfied and also curious, all at the same time. But then again, there is so much to learn as a team and individually. We are excited and looking forward to explore more.

Some moments:

It has created an everlasting memory in all our hearts, the learning from this experience has enriched our souls and has brought us and also others who witnessed it back to our roots.

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