Title: Stretch and Warmup

General Information about Item:

• Genre: Customary Folklore: Rituals

• Language: English

• Country: United States of America

Informant Data:

Shashwat Kala, aged 21, is a Director of Ujima who joined the group his freshman fall (2014). He is a senior at Dartmouth College who was born, raised, and currently lives in Waterford, Connecticut. Before Ujima, Shash had no formal dance training but participated in his hometown’s cultural dance shows for Indian festivals.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: The entire team participates in the Stretch and Warmup ritual. This ritual occurs before practices and performances.  It originated at the group’s founding, and Shash first learned of it when he participated during his freshman fall.

• Cultural Context: Many dance groups encourage their members to stretch and warmup. However, because Ujima places great value on togetherness, the team requires that their members do so together as a group activity. This gives members more time to work on corrections and improve together.

Item:

Prior to shows and practices, Ujima members stretch and warmup as a group in order to loosen their bodies and improve their performance.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file): Video

Transcript of Associated File:

“At the show, people are cheering, there’s a lot of adrenaline, so you’re hitting moves harder and you’re dancing with a lot more energy than you’ve probably done in practice. And it’s really important that if you are going out there with so much energy that you are not doing that to a body that has not been warmed up. So just for safety and so that nobody gets hurt. It’s a way to get your body to feel looser and less tight, as well, that helps you stay loose and clean when you perform. So you usually do this: [Demonstration]. Pretty classic. Girls who can hit a split will usually sit in a split for a little while. I can’t do one. And then the other classic one is just you stand up and you touch your toes. And that’s that. I believe in it. I think I stretch a lot more than the average person on Ujima before a show because I think for me personally, I like the way it feels. And psychologically, I like that I’m preparing myself, preparing my body as much as I can before I have to go out and perform. So probably more for me.”

Informant’s Comments:

Although this is a group ritual, the majority of dancers stretch and warm up due to personal belief in its impact rather than peer pressure.

Collector’s Comments:

Although the stretches and warm ups are a group ritual, it is interesting to note the variations that each individual has on the types of exercises that are best suited to his or her body. For example, many of the women will stretch in a split together while the men have their own exercises.

Collector’s Name: Shinar Jain

Compiled/Analyzed By: Shinar Jain

Tags/Keywords:

• Ritual
• Dance
• Team