By Keyra Kristoffersen | [email protected]

Thanks to a collaborative effort between LiveDaybreak and a group of residents, the Daybreak community hosted a night of dancing and color with the Bollywood at Daybreak event on July 28. It was held at SoDa Row as part of their summer concert series.

“With the support of Daybreak and advertising and word of mouth from the people who really enjoyed the event last time, it was just really well received and we’re really happy about that,” said Alice Dave’, one of the organizers in charge of wrangling performers throughout the night. 

What started out as an excuse to have a girls’ night out at their favorite Indian restaurants and watch Bollywood movies between a group of women with ties to Salt Lake’s Indian community, soon turned into a community event. As more residents became aware of it, the Bollywood night kept growing until finally they went to the newly formed LiveDaybreak to make it a sponsored event for everyone to enjoy. 

“That was something we all loved to do and we thought more people would like to do this as well,” said Dave’ who joined the group this year. 

Though this is the Bollywood at Daybreak’s fourth official year as a community event, it’s been three years since the last one was held.

“People just kept asking about it and so we went to Daybreak to see if they could help give us support and they were very supportive and they integrated the event into their summer music series and got us some funding and helped us advertise it,” said Dave’ who believes that explained the jump from 500 attendees at the last event to more than 5,000 over the course of the night this year. 

Dave’, an American who married an Indian man 15 years ago, said the group of women at the center of the event are a collection of both Indian women and American women with strong ties to the community, though she said when she attends events with her husband, she tends to be the only white woman in the room. 

“It was really a pleasure to share what I love about the Indian community and culture with a wider American population,” said Dave’. “It’s so vibrant, it’s so colorful, the food is so transformative and it’s thousands and thousands of years accumulation and they’ve managed to maintain that culture over these thousands of years.”

Attendees were treated to a range of sights and activities such as clothing shops selling saris, a small color throw and Indian ice cream from Apna Baazar, an Indian market in South Jordan. There were also five henna artists and a rangoli artist, Shaily Pandya, drawing colorful mandala patterns in paint while the crowd watched. Sumit’s Hot Yoga Studio ran classes for all levels and an information booth was set up to answer questions about the new Krishna temple being built in Brickyard.

Around 20 local performance groups, including the Utah singing group, Desibels, and dancers as young as seven years old, performed traditional Indian and Bollywood dances and songs in colorful outfits from all over India. One group came from the Divya School of Dance in South Jordan.    

“She came and did awesome dances that got the crowd excited and up on their feet,” said Dave’. “It was very cool to watch the kids in the audience rush up there and they got so excited about the great music and dancing, and they just wanted to dance along.”

To end the night, a Bollywood movie, “Daawat-e-Ishq” was screened under the stars. Apart from the dancing, Dave’ said everyone who attended was most excited by the food and was glad so many local restaurants became involved. 

“Everyone’s happy with how this went, so hoping to continue and make it bigger next year. LiveDaybreak were very gracious. I can tell how anxious they are to have inclusive and diverse things to sort of shine a light on the community. I’m glad we could be a part of that,” said Dave.