Punjabi flavour : 23 students to dance to Bhangra beats at Olympics

 
Amandeep Singh
Chandigarh, July 16
The London Olympics are still 11 days away, but 23 schoolchildren from Punjab have already won their game. They, along with a girl from a Chandigarh school, have made it to the final league of 100 children selected for representing the nation during a cultural extravaganza at the mega sporting event beginning later this month.

Students rehearse for a bhangra performance at the London Olympics. A Tribune photograph

As expected, ‘bhangra’ is the pick from the region and these children, students of Gems Cambridge International School in Hoshiarpur and Cambridge School in Batala, would be dancing to the beats of ‘dhol’.
Among the participants are Aditi Vashishth, Akashdeep Singh, Anchal, Bhupinder Singh, Divya Gupta, Gurpreet, Harkaran Singh, Harmanpreet Sodhi, Harpreet Singh, Hitika Vassal, Kuber Sharma, Manipal, Manjot, Parveen Garg, Raghav Vassal, Rahul Gupta, Uttkarsh, Sanjeev Sood, Vidit Gupta, Yadwinder Singh, Aachman Shekar and Rajni Gupta.
The Chandigarh student is Asmita Chibbar, from Strawberry World in Sector 26, who would be playing the role of ‘Bharat Mata’. A Chennai-based company, Space Kids India, has partnered with a Chandigarh firm, iMatrix, for selecting the ‘bhangra’ team. Space Kids was entrusted the job by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG). Space Kids is accredited with the LOCOG.
Rohit Shekhar Sharma, CEO of iMatrix World Wide, said, “These students will be performing in the “Main Band Stand” on July 30 and August 2. The team has earlier performed at several international events, particularly at NASA in the US.”
Sharma said the children are on cloud nine as they have got rare chance of representing the country at an international mega event.
Space Kidz director K Srimathy said more than 500 organisations had applied for representing the country at the Olympics. Apart from ‘bhangra’, performances from India would feature ‘bharatnatyam’ and ‘kathak’.
Gems Cambridge International School principal Pawan Vashishst said, “Our children have been regularly performing in various national and international events. Our team got selected on account of words of appreciation we have received from international organisations. Getting selected surely was not an easy job going by the number of applicants received for the event.” 
ons by the organisations to participate in the event.