An all-female group of competitors paid homage to their Indian heritage through costumed dance and cultural stories. 

On Saturday night, Natya, a Rutgers-based team and winner of the dance competition, told the story of the god Krishna’s birth, whose parents, according to Hindu religion, had suffered the loss of seven other children at the hands of the evil ruler Kasma.

The Dhirana executive board and committees of Pitt students and graduates hosted eight teams from across the country in a competition at Soldiers and Sailors on Saturday, Feb. 21. The all-female dancers — from Penn State, Johns Hopkins University and University of California, Berkeley — wore traditional Indian garb, some of them in red dresses with metallic bells that jingled as they danced. Pitt’s dance team, Nrityamala, did not compete in the event because they were acting as hosts, but did perform twice. 

The event raised more than $8,000 for the Pittsburgh-based Birmingham Free Clinic, which provides free medical care to the uninsured and underinsured in Pittsburgh.

Transforming from a wall of Kamsa’s angry guards, the women turned into a rhythmic ocean a moment later. The performers use facial expressions and hand gestures to act out stories that are specific to Hinduism, like the god Ganga’s descent to earth, as well as universal tales, like one about a young woman violated by a gang of men and shamed by her town. 

Each team put on performances for an audience that filled roughly less than half the auditorium, which seats more than 2,000 people. Akshaya Arjunan, secretary of the Dhirana Executive Board, was not able to provide an exact number of ticket sales by time of publication, she estimated the attendance was about 800. A panel of eight judges, made up of professional dancers with extensive backgrounds, chose first-, second- and third-place winners at the end of the night. 

Akshaya Arjunan, secretary of the Dhirana executive board, said since sponsors — including Tamarind Flavor of India and the Outside the Classroom Curriculum — funded the program, Dhirana can donate 100 percent of the revenue from ticket sales to the Birmingham Free Clinic.

Clinical Director Mary Herbert was at the event to express her gratitude for the more than $16,000 Dhirana has donated in the past two years, which helped to purchase a new EKG machine.

The Dhirana board looked for a charity in the Pittsburgh area with a direct effect on Pittsburgh citizens and students. 

“We wanted to pick a charity close and dear to us,” Dhirana co-director Rushi Patel said.

Dhirana emphasizes bringing classical Indian dance into the next generation, according to Arjunan, a senior neuroscience major and a member of Pitt PantheRaas. 

“Dhirana is making classical dance cool again,” the event’s program said. 

This goal was visualized at Dhirana as introductory performance videos fused hip-hop with Indian rhythm and students cheered from the balcony for their respective competing schools and the night’s exhibition acts.

Rutgers University took home the first-place trophy, while the University of Maryland’s team, Moksha, won second. The University of California, Berkeley took third place and an award for the “most traditional and classical elements” from the night’s leading sponsor, the Srinivasa Prasad International Foundation for the Performing Arts.

Anand Mahalingam, who graduated from Pitt in 2013, and his brother, Ram, who graduated in 2011, served as masters of ceremonies at the show and cracked jokes while announcing performances.

Shravani Charyulu, captain of Pitt’s Nrityamala, said her team, which performed to open and close the show, portrayed the stories of Hanuman, a devotee of Lord Rama, one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu.

She said classical dance teams don’t often portray Hanuman’s stories, though the team thought the performance would be a creative way to bring back the stories.

Charyulu, a sophomore marketing major, said the team had been preparing the performance since September. 

“The lights, the emotions and the show time in general are always something we look forward to,” Charyulu said. “Dancing on a team with dancers from all over the country, who have learned different styles of dance and who are so talented is an honor.”

Towards the end of the night, Mahalingam quoted a line from the movie, “The Monuments Men.”

“If you destroy a people’s art or culture, it’s as if they never existed,” he said. 

Dhirana, Mahalingam explained, is a way of preserving a culture. 

The event’s sponsors and leaders each stressed the importance of creating spaces on college campuses where young men and women can celebrate tradition and history.

Mahalingam said people always ask him why he spends so much time planning for Dhirana.

“If those people were sitting in the audience tonight,” Mahalingam said, looking into the crowd full of proud families and students, “I think they would understand why.”