KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2010 / NEWS
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New Bollywood dance club fuses both Indian and American styles
BY CARLO RAMIREZ cramirez@kansan.com
CONTRIBUTED GRAPHIC
The Bollywood Dance Project Club will host its first class tonight at 8:30 p.m. in the aerobics room at the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center. The class is free and president Mahmood Khan advises anyone who is interested to come out.
"It's a form of self-expression and provides a lot of satisfaction," said Khan, a senior from Bangladesh. "Dancing has made me who I am."
Khan has been performing Bollywood shows in Kansas for five years. After several performances, Khan said many people expressed an interest in learning to dance in the Bollywood style. He sees his class as the bridge that can help people who are interested in the dance actually learn its unique form.
Club treasurer and class instructor Arooj Khalid has been good friends with Khan for several years, so she was right on board when Khan decided to start the class.
"We're hoping for people who are not into dancing too much — it's a beginners class," said Khalid, a junior from Islamabad. "We want people to come and have fun."
The premise of the club is to initially use Indian music to teach Bollywood dance. Once the basics of Bollywood are covered, Khan will start the second phase of the class, in which he plans to incorporate various types of American music and dance. Khan said he is considering hip hop but is open to anything that might fit with Bollywood.
"I want to experiment — dance Bollywood to American forms of music and take American forms of dancing and dance to Indian music," Khan said.
Sarah Gelvin, a senior from Overland Park, is excited for the opportunity to learn a new dance form.
"My best friend's mom is always watching Bollywood movies," Gelvin said. "So I have always been pretty interested in it, and now I have the opportunity to learn it."
For those who are unfamiliar, Bollywood is not a physical location, but a term that refers to the film industry in Mumbai, India.
Bollywood films often feature classical and folk styles of Indian
dance, and are sometimes blended with Western dance styles in more modern movies. Khan said Bollywood is Indian, but Indian movies
South Asia.
and songs cater to all cultures in
Amna Humayon, a junior from Fremont, Calif., and vice president of the club, said she was excited to help teach the class with Khan and Khalid and create their vision "of infusing different dance cultures together."
"I hope the visitors walk away with some feeling of satisfaction and want to come back for another class — just to expand their horizons and diversify their activities," Humayon said.
The club doesn't require any particular clothing. Just dress comfortably and bring an open-minded attitude.
—Edited by Alex Tretbar
NEWS
Obama's chief of staff to leave office and enter mayoral race
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO - White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is set to give up his influential national post Friday to begin a run for Chicago mayor, a job he has long coveted but won't win unless he persuades voters he's still one of them.
People close to Emanuel said he will fly home over the weekend and hit the streets Monday to talk to voters, after announcing his resignation Friday. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says only that President Barack Obama will make a "personnel announcement" Friday morning, but even his vague comments made it eminently clear Emanuel is leaving.
"He intends to run for mayor," one person close to Emanuel told The Associated Press, requesting anonymity to avoid pre-empting the announcement.
The move pits Emanuel, one of the most powerful men in the
nation, against a growing field of local politicians vying for the job that will be vacated next spring by Mayor Richard M. Daley, who announced last month that he will not seek a seventh term.
Emanuel's victory in the race is not a sure thing, with rivals certain to attack the longtime political operative and former congressman as a brusque outsider who belongs more to Pennsylvania Avenue than Michigan Avenue, more to the halls of Congress than City Hall.
Two people close to him said Thursday they did not know when Emanuel would officially declare he was entering the mayoral race, but that he would launch a website with a message to Chicago voters in the near future.
Emanuel has certainly left his mark on Washington, D.C., where his departure, expected by the political world ever since Daley's surprise announcement, remains an unquestioned loss for Obama.
Obama is expected to install senior adviser Pete Rouse, a calm White House presence with his own seasoned understanding of how Washington work, to serve as interim chief of staff. Gibbs said the president has "complete loyalty and trust" in Rouse, though he wouldn't confirm Rouse had been tapped for the interim post. The president is likely to choose a permanent chief of staff after the Nov. 2 midterm elections.
The president has counted on Emanuel's intensity, discipline and congressional relationships to keep the White House focused and aggressive. Holding a job with nearly unrivaled pressure and power, Emanuel has been true to form at the White House — a briskly moving political manager who is prone to profanity and driven to delivering on the president's directives.
Droughts end after rainstorms
NATIONAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RALEIGH, N.C. — A massive rainstorm drenched the East Coast from the Carolinas to Maine on Thursday, causing at least five deaths, flooding roads and washing away months of dry weather.
The worst of the rain fell in North Carolina, where Jacksonville picked up 12 inches — nearly a quarter of its typical annual rainfall — in the six hours. Four people, including two children, were killed when the sport utility vehicle they were traveling in skidded off a rain-slicked highway and tumbled into a ditch filled with water, North Carolina troopers said. A fifth victim likely drowned when his pickup veered off the road and into a river that was raging because of the rain.
The rain was part of a system moving ahead of the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole, which dissipated over the Straits of Florida on Wednesday.
In Walpole, N.H., Erin Bickford said the deluge was a welcome sight for her eight acres of vegetables. She said she hoped the moisture also would recharge wells that went dry in the town.
"We had almost no rain at all. Often, we could see it raining across the river, but it didn't come here. It was just dust. Even if it did rain, it would be a tiny bit, maybe half an inch," she said.
North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper Gary Edwards said troopers initially reported five people were killed in the
crash because two children, 3-year-old twins, did not have a pulse when emergency workers arrived on scene. However, rescuers were able to revive them and they were taken to a hospital alive. One of the twins later died, a news release from the patrol said.
Edwards said the family of five from Atlanta was traveling westbound on U.S. 64 east of Creswell around 12:20 p.m. when their Jeep Cherokee hit a patch of standing water, hydroplaned and skidded off the highway into the ditch.
The four killed were identified as the driver, Daniel Alvarez, 25; his wife, Natalie Owens, 26; Zacharia Alvarez, 3; and Ariela Alvarez, 1. Zacharia's twin, Ezekiel, was taken to a hospital in Greenville, N.C.
Baltimore Gas and Electric says approximately 40,000 of its Maryland customers have lost power.
Forecasters expected those heavy winds to spread up the coast, possibly toppling trees and power lines made unstable by the saturated ground.
The winds also were churning up big waves that were eating away at a "living shoreline" of rocks, sand and grasses built this year on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, said Bob Gilbert from his waterfront home in Churchton, about 10 miles south of Annapolis.
The rain caused several other wrecks Thursday, including a crash between two transit buses in Maryland that left 26 people hurt.
BROADWAY (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
older generations, Broadway cannot survive without young people, he said. That is why Berg was excited to perform at the Lied Center and in front of college audiences generally — because of the energy younger people bring.
"We who are the life-blood of Broadway know that Broadway cannot survive unless young people come to the theater," Berg said.
Today other forms of musicals have captured the ears of many young fans. Shows such as "Glee" and movies such as "High School Musical" have brought a form of Broadway to a younger audience. Berg and Carter Calvert, one of the singers in the show, agree that these forms of musicals are nothing but good for Broadway.
"Shows like 'Glee' are popularizing this art form that has been around forever," said Calvert, who has been on Broadway for 10 years and has performed in shows such as "Cats."
"It's just making people aware of it." she said.
Flinn and Lounds agreed that shows like "Glee" can interest younger generations in the classic shows of Broadway — shows like "Grease."
Just 20 minutes into the show, all four of the cast members came out on stage to sing a rendition of "Grease Lighting." Calvert was approached coolly by a man in sunglasses — Rob Evan, who has performed in "Les Miserables" and is also the lead singer of the band Tran Siberian Orchestra. Evan asks her in an Elvis Presley voice if she wants to go for a ride in his car.
She replies, "You have a car?"
And just before the memorable tune of "Grease Lightning" begins, he replies in a deep and seductive voice.
"Yeah ... It's a hybrid."
Edited by Michael Bednar
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Carlos Monteagudo, a sophomore from Shawnee, listens to Sydney Swanson, a representative of Environment America, Tuesday afternoon outside the Union. Environment America is on campus this week recruiting students to support the Clean Water Restoration Act. Due to a technical error, this photo ran without a cutline in Tuesday's paper.
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