Gioja Catzi talks about Best of the Best: four months of training and filming the museum group dance

Rehearsed in the garage at two in the morning, made my own props, and went to the warehouse to figure out what nails and screws to use for a trap door.When Gioia Kazee talks about the Netflix film Best of the Best, she recalls her days as a competitive dance team at the University of California, Davis, 20 years ago.She has personally experienced the campus competition, friction between friends and rehearsal life in the film.

Directed by Lena Khan, the film is about friendship and dance. Qazi co-choreographed the film with Makenzie Dustman and Phillip Chbeeb and served as cultural consultant.She said that she used to have to explain to others what Bollywood dance was and why this art was worthy of attention. Now that movies have sparked global discussions, she feels gratified and is more aware of the responsibility of expressing her own culture.

Qazi began dancing at the age of eight and later choreographed for films, TV series, and music videos, as well as touring with his own dance company.She has participated in The Afterparty and Never Have I Ever, and has collaborated with musicians such as Wu-Tang Clan, Saweetie and Raja Kumari.

The lead actors, Maitriyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia, had little previous dance experience and underwent four months of training for the film.Qazi once collaborated with Ramakrishnan in Never Have I Ever. At that time, there might only be three hours of preparation time for a set of actions. When the actors touched up their makeup between scenes, they had to squeeze in a short period of about ten minutes to rehearse.

The movie leaves out a more complete training process.Qazi said Ramakrishnan was smart, disciplined and had good memory and concentration, but becoming a competitive dancer required the body to develop muscle memory.The fatigue and frustration caused by long training must also be experienced personally.In the end, she completed moves in various styles such as Kuthu and hip-hop.

For Qazi, the work of cultural consultants has always been linked to action design.South Asia has many languages, costumes, food and dance traditions, and the movie is about young South Asians living in the United States.Therefore, she has to consider at the same time the story the director hopes to express, the community's expectations for cultural presentation, and whether the actors can perform the actions well.

The film uses Indian classical dance, Bhangra, Garba, Kuthu and other folk dances, as well as dance types from American pop culture.She wanted the styles to intertwine as naturally as a real dance team would perform.Listing different dance types and presenting them one by one only scratches the surface of culture.

Actions also need to be subject to changes in characters.Maya and Anjali are friends who grew up together. After entering college, they have to re-recognize their identities and relationships.The Bharatanatyam classical dance that Qazi originally choreographed for the opening scene was too exciting, and the director asked her several times to reduce her movements to basic levels.The script requires the two of them to pin their breakthrough on the drone at the beginning, leaving the power of classical dance to be presented later.

In the museum section, Maya danced solo in silence, returning to her classical dance roots.The two girls also rediscovered the dance moves they created together as children.Qazi likes this change: they find strength in the culture they have always had, reestablishing a common expression.

For the rehearsal at the end of the museum, the camera must be designed into the dance.The audience sometimes enters the dance troupe, and statues, paintings, and set walls move simultaneously around the camera.The dancers need to push the scenery, through holes in the walls and frames, all at the exact right shot.If you are late at any point, the entire section will have to start from scratch.

That was the most stressful week of preparation, Qazi said.During rehearsals, there were even situations where there were only ten minutes left and if we couldn’t do it anymore, we had to delete the entire section.The dancers constantly adjusted together to finally connect the movements, scenery and camera.

When teaching actors and dancers, Qazi would try to explain the same detail in different ways.She has been a professional dancer for many years and knows how nervous it is to finally get a job opportunity and encounter unfamiliar moves.If the other party does not understand, she will first adjust her expression and provide some technical methods to help master the movements.

She likened the habits of different dance styles to the accents in a language.Some in the team have never learned Indian classical dance or folk dance, and some have never danced hip-hop or ballroom dance.When switching styles, the body will retain traces of the original training, and there are many small changes to pay attention to.She hopes to have more patience in teaching so that dancers can bring trust and investment back to their performances.

The same dance will show different temperaments in different teams.Qazi used Punjabi folk dance and Bhangra for both the UCLA and USC teams.UCLA's movements should be happy and energetic, while USC's performances should be more aggressive.She even arranged for the latter to move her thumb across the neck to enhance the opponent's aggressiveness.

People who have danced together for many years will also develop a coordination that does not require speaking.If someone forgets a move, takes a shot late, or has a problem with the costume, his teammates can feel it and make adjustments in time, so that the audience will not notice the mistake.Qazi also sees this rapport in Maya and Anjali's museum sequence: Anjali knows when to support her friend, knows the two are about to return to the dance moves they made together when they were five years old.

Qazi's cultural consulting work also involves casting and art.She worked closely with Lina, Prashanth, and Hasan, repeatedly recommending actors, hoping to get them a chance to enter the audition room even if they didn't know each other.South Asian creators later also participated in the final exhibition design.

A painting by Raja Ravi Varma - Woman Holding a Fruit - (Woman Holding a Fruit) appears in the museum, and dance animates the images in the three paintings.Qazi also included decorative pottery from Pattachitra of West Bengal, hoping that the artwork in the picture would have a clear cultural origin.

Another detail emerged in UT Dallas' performance.The dance had a Pakistani cultural and Islamic background, but was set in a tavern-style setting.Qazi therefore swapped out alcoholic beverages for drinks such as Fanta, Crush, Orange Crush and Rooh Afza to harmonize the set with the cultural context of the show.

Looking back on his time on the college dance team, Kazee believes that what he learned at that time was also how to get along with people with different personalities, how to take responsibility, how to lead a team, and when to let others lead.These experiences influenced the way she later worked in the industry.

Her company, Joya Kazi Entertainment, is preparing for a Disneyland park project, and the tour - Rhythm India - is also scheduled to start again next year.For the next stage, Qazi hopes to continue to participate in cultural consulting work and allow more voices from his own community to enter creation.She said the details of the casting, paintings, pottery and drinks in Best of the Best are among her most cherished contributions.