HOUGHTON – The Diwali Night feast was good, Michigan Tech post-doctoral student Sachin Tewatia said, “but we have similar food at home. The show is only once a year.”

“There’s dancing and singing and it’s fun,” added his daughter Sahani Tewatia, 8.

Thursday night’s Indian Student Association Diwali performance at the Rozsa Center was built around a time-machine theme, with student actors going back in time seeking ideas for a Diwali Show that weren’t just another year of “Bollywood music, an out-of-the-box skit and one-of-a-kind Bollywood dance” numbers. Exactly those sorts of performances, along with some traditional dance pieces, were incorporated into that framework.

The time-traveling skitsters eventually realized you just can’t beat Bollywood, or the other art forms mentioned, but the show’s final segment did just that, with fusion numbers that combined traditional and modern dance.

Diwali is a big night for the Indian community on campus, said dancer and geophysics graduate student Muskaan Khurana, and the performance is the biggest part of what makes it special. Daily practice for the performance starts about a month ahead of the show, and continues nearly until show time.

“It’s every day, five or six hours,” said dancer Sayali Kulkarni. “Some nights people practice until 3 a.m. at the SDC (Student Development Complex).”

About 75 Indian Student Association members are involved in the show, said performer Sid Nayar.

Khurana said she was exited about some of the classical, fusion and regional dances, but her friend Aishwarya Mundada said the core of the show came back to India’s most popular modern art form.

“We can’t do without Bollywood,” she said.

Mundada said dance performances are common in India as well, where most performers had spent their undergraduate years, “but I never did this much dancing.”

The rehearsals and eventually the show are a great last chance at some fun before students settle in for intense research and study for the rest of the year, Nayar said.

It’s true, performers agreed, they have to limit what they eat to make sure it doesn’t slow them on stage, but it’s the stage show that allows them to express their outgoing national personality.

“We Indian people are very loud,” laughed Khurana. “We just go crazy.”

“When there’s music, there’s dancing,” Nayar added.