Creating the first Indian dance team in the Miami-Dade Public Schools system helped Coral Gables High senior Bhargavi Pochi earn more than 1,000 community service hours.
It started when her father asked her to compete at a local bhangra competition.
“I gathered six friends. We didn’t place,” she said. “To be fair, we were going against high school bhangra teams that had been established three years or longer.”
After that she went to the activities director and proposed starting a dance team.
“Currently we have 11 members. It’s grown since sophomore year,” Pochi said. “We hold tryouts. It’s really cool.”
This month the team was going back to the same competition that she competed in two years ago. Pochi was an Indian classical dancer from when she was 9 years old.
“My mother originally taught me Indian dance,” she said. “Oddly enough, I hated it for my first two years. Now I love it.”
She has taught Indian dance to students at Ponce de Leon Middle School, to Gables students and to Best Buddies.
“It was a great experience for both us and the students,” she Pochi.
Even her International Baccalaureate community service project involved Indian dance. She introduced four new dance styles to the team.
“For each dance we had a different costume,” she said. “We were portraying Indian culture through costume.”
Her college list includes schools that have an Indian dance team. The list includes Duke, Dartmouth, the University of Miami, Bucknell University, and the University of Michigan.
“I’m hoping to major in environmental sciences but I also like anthropology,” she said. “Ideally, I’d like to study animal behavior.”
She is secretary for Bridge for Peace, sponsored by the IB Honor Society; vice president of the Art Club, and copy editor for Cavs Connect.
Outside of school, she interned with a Marine biology professor and learned how human interactions influence fish population. Another volunteer job was as a Zoo Miami conservation teen scientist.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
