Legends 2021 COVID-19
Season Updates
09/13/20 Updated
To our community,
We hope you have all been safe and well over the last few months. With the persisting volatility of the COVID-19 pandemic, Legends has made the tough decision to not have any Partner Competitions during the 2020-2021 Bollywood Fusion season.
Legends had initially planned to wait until more Spring guidelines were released by states and universities to make a decision. However, after evaluating the current timeline for a vaccine release and pandemic recovery, it is clear that it would be irresponsible to commit to a 2021 dance season. Over the last 6 months, Legends leadership has maintained communication with 50+ Bollywood-fusion competitions and 150+ Bollywood-fusion teams through surveys, GroupMe, and monthly calls. Based on their feedback and individual situations, we believe that a truncated Partner Competition season would not be safe or viable.
While Legends will not be having Partner Competitions for the 2020-2021 season, we remain flexible as a board and will adapt to the changing circumstances. Provided that it is safe and ethically responsible to do so, Legends is committed to hosting an event in 2021. The safety and well-being of our community will remain our first and foremost priority. While our contracts and independent affiliation permit us the flexibility to move our date, we will continue to monitor the situation and make a decision based on local, state and federal guidelines.
Our commitment to our community goes beyond hosting a national championship. Legends intends to utilize this time to focus on initiatives such as sexual assault prevention, diversity and inclusion, and judging standards. We encourage competitions and teams to remain active on cultural changes within your campus and local areas. If you wish to host events, make sure to follow guidelines and that your external requirements do not encourage participants to break any guidelines.
We are building new and creative ways to stay active and help our members feel connected. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at legends@desidancenetwork.org.
Thank you for your continued support and patience!
#TheJourneyWillContinue
With love,
Legends 2021 Board
Legends 2020
Cancellation Statement
05/17/20 Updated
To our community,
Due to the health and safety concerns surrounding COVID-19, Legends has come to the extremely difficult decision to cancel our championship this season. We have spent the last few days extensively deliberating both internally and externally with eligible teams. With heavy hearts, we concluded that the health risk posed to our dancers, audience, and other community members could not justify continuing to host Legends this season. Additionally, on March 12th, 2020 Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker & Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot mandated that all events involving 1000+ must be canceled immediately in Chicago. These circumstances led us to the decision to make the well-being of our community our top priority this season.
Unfortunately, we are unable to guarantee Legends 2020 at a postponed date. As the COVID-19 situation remains extremely volatile, we are unable to determine the timeline for when conditions would be safe enough to host Legends 2020. Additionally, after sharing a sensing survey to our potentially eligible teams, we realized that other logistical issues such as graduations, internships, and travels prevent us from finding a new date that is fair to all teams. We want to thank our community, and especially our teams and partner competitions for being a part of our journey this year. To the graduating seniors & those dancing in this circuit for a last season who lost out on the great experiences, please do not ever stop growing your passion for dance, this community, and the spirit of giving back.
We want to thank our media team, judges, exhibitions teams, and sponsors for believing in us and helping bring our vision to fruition. And most importantly, we want to thank our amazing board for pushing the limits of what Legends can do and be after countless hours of preparation.
Legends was founded on the principle of “for dancers, by dancers”, and we will continue to work together to provide the best experience possible to our community. We will be using the remainder of the season to make progress on our internal and external initiatives in order to continue the growth of this circuit. Thank you for continuing to support us, and we can’t wait to see where Legends 2021 takes us. As always, please reach out to us with any questions at legends@desidancenetwork.org.
#TheJourneyWillContinue
Sincerely,
Pooja Mehta & Rishab Mokkapati
Legends 2020 Co-Directors
