United India Association of New England (UIANE) organized a virtual Holi Showtime Premier known as ‘Rang Barse’ on Sunday, March 28, 2021. The evening was filled with melodious singing, dancing, and comedy. Hundreds of spectators both on Zoom and Facebook attended the event and enjoyed the joy of Holi, the festival of love, colors and spring and involves people throwing colored powder and water at each other but due to pandemic guidelines the festival was celebrated just by showcasing the talents on the virtual platform.

UIANE was founded in 1984 with the core mission to preserve, promote and nurture the values of our Indian heritage by planning, developing, and executing programs like Holi and Diwali celebrations to bring our community together. The program started with the welcome remarks by Aditi Soni, president, UIANE. She said that UIANE was one of the very few organizations that started to celebrate Holi in New England area about 10 years ago. Today, we have an exciting line-up of music, dance, poetry, and comedy performances for the evening from our very talented Boston folks. She invited the chief guest, Ms. Sumbul Siddiqui, the second term Cambridge city Mayor who delivered her Holi greetings and wished everyone, ‘A Happy Holi’ and  grand  success of the event. Ms. Garima and Ms. Rajul known as Chinki/Minki of UIANE presented an energetic dance performance that was followed by a beautiful song ‘Ek Radha Ek Meera’ by Bhaswati Ghosh. An exciting Kathak dance “Rangon ke Rang, Ghungroo ke Sang” choreographed by Mona Mitra of Mona dance academy was performed by Prisha, Miley, Sanvi, Gunjan, Dia, Atrayee, Shubhra, Nitika, Supriya, and Sneha. Ms. Manisha Chaudhary sang a beautiful song ‘Maine Socha Na Tha’ and accompanied by Sudipta Singh on guitar.

 Mr. Preetesh Srivastava from Hindi Manch presented a very comic standup comedy how ‘Guys and gals’ think and do things differently and made laugh a lot. Later, Nikita’s Bollywood dance academy performed a dashing dance with Ishita, Nikita, and Gauri. Ms. Razia recited very interesting Holi Shayari and entertained the audiences. This was followed by Rajwadi Odhani dance choreographed by Jasmine Shah and performed by Aayushi Tripathi, Keya Upadhyay, Rahi Shah, Sritha Sithlam, Vaishnavi Gupta, Sahiti Chaturvedula. Ekta Jain from Ekta’s Dance Academy performed a rhythmic ‘Radha Krishna’s jodi playing Holi’ dance. Sayed Ali Rozvi narrated Holi Shayari that described how Holi is celebrated in different areas of India. An excellent  Mujra dance, a format that emerged during Mughal rule in India was choreographed and performed by Pooja Tiwari. Priya Samant presented a monologue - influence of Bollywood. Radha Muthian presented an interesting dance. Then came the  Fauj Bangra dhamaka in which Ullas Rao, Anil Kundal, Aishwarya Chandrashekar, Mahima Kotamreddy, Cherag Selhi, Sid Srivastava, Pooja Jhaveri, Anureet Kaur, Anurag Selhi, Vasu Roja, Pranita Lokendi, Minerva Teli, Param Chopra, Prabhjyot Kaur, Bhuvna Mahajan made all the audiences dance in their own chairs. An enjoyable finale fusion was presented by DFD Academy.

In the closing remarks, Aditi Soni thanked the Cambridge City Mayor, UIANE teams, performers, and all the guests. UIANE team was emcee of the event that included Vice President – Dr. Malini Prabhu, Secretary – Aanch Jain, Treasurer – Rashi Gujral, Web director - Neha Garg Patel; Board of directors – Jaya Goyal, Yash Sood, Rakesh Datta, Veena Kapoor, Febian Shah, Lovely Kaur, Deepak Garg; Board of advisors – Sonia Sharma, Rekha Palriwala, Rakesh Soni; Founding member and advisor - Jatinder Sharma. Lastly, She requested all the participants to follow them on social media including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for future event and support UIANE by becoming members.

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