After seven months of rehearsal, Nisha Patel began her first five-minute performance in 2010 for the UIUC Raas Team at center stage. 

“You get on the stage, and you can’t even see a single thing out there, because it’s just black,” Patel said as she reminisced over standing before an audience for her first Raas performance. “You just hear everything and you are on spotlight.”

A teammate at the time, Avsar Modi joined Patel at a theater in Ann Arbor, Mich. for this performance. Today, Patel, senior in LAS, is co-captain of the team with Modi, junior in FAA.

Together, Patel and Modi teach the team the traditional Indian folk dance called Raas as well as choreography for the annual contest, Raas Mania, to take place on Saturday, Feb. 23 at Lincoln Hall. Since the majority of the UIUC Raas Team is composed of freshmen this semester, the team will forgo competing in this year’s event, but will give an “exhibition act,” which Patel and Modi refer to as “The Return.”

Other teams from across the country that will perform at the University’s first intercollegiate Raas competition include St. Louis University (SLU Raas), Emory University (Emory SaRaas), University of Texas at Austin (Texas Raas), University of Miami (Swaggeraas), Indiana University (Indiana HoosierRaas)and University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC Dangeraas). 

Each team has 16 members on average – eight males and eight females. 

On stage, the teams will compete for a bid to make it into the Raas Nationals, along with the other top six teams in the nation. The Raas dance, which emerged from the state of Gujarat, India,incorporates two baton-like sticks per person, called dandiyas. 

These are used throughout the festival of Navratri, when performers dance in circles to honor the Goddess Durga. The dance incorporates twirling of the dandiyas and high-energy footwork with intricate choreography. Performers dance to a fusion of modern American and traditional Indian folk music. 

Female performers wear a full-length skirt, blouse top, sequins and a secured headpiece. Males wear a similar ensemble featuring loose pants and shirt. This year, the UIUC Raas Team’s costumes and dandiyas will feature pink and blue colors.

“We get up at 5 a.m. and put on our full costume right there and then, even though we don’t dance until 8 p.m. at night,” Patel said. “The costume itself probably weighs about three pounds, it’s crazy. Throughout the day you just feel an adrenaline rush.” 

As Patel and Modi prepared for one their last rehearsals before the weekend’s competition, they recollected the moments leading to their first Raas performance. According to Patel, the UIUC Raas Team had about 200 fans from the University drive to the 2010 competition to cheer them on.

“We are hearing I-L-L-I-N-I probably to the extent that you would hear at a football game,” Patel said. 

“You can hear the stage,” he added.  

“The stage is moving,” said Modi, completing Patel’s thought. 

“It’s shaking while you are backstage. And it is so scary because you think, ‘I am about to stand on that stage,’ and people are screaming for you,” Patel said.

This year, co-directors and former UIUC Raas Team members Anjali Raichura, senior in ACES, and Mayuri Baheti, senior in Business, hope to see more Illini faces in Raas Mania’s crowd.

“So far we have around 200 tickets sold,” Raichura said. “And there will be approximately 200 people attending, 18 to 20 people per team with managers and such.”

Patel and Modi say although they can remember everything leading up to their Raas performances, the events following are usually a blur.

“I had to watch a video to see how we did,” Patel said about the 2010 Raas competition. “We did really well.”

Lyanne can be reached at [email protected].