The music, colorful costumes and overflowing energy of MELA 2014 could be felt before stepping into a packed Levin Ballroom on Saturday night. MELA, which means “celebration” in Sanskrit, is an annual student-run cultural show.

The event is put together by the South Asian Students’ Association (SASA) to bring cultural awareness of the eight countries of South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. SASA’s co-presidents Anuj Vadalia ’15 and Lekha Grandhi ’16 and events coordinators, Meher Irani ’16 and Apoorva Polavarapu ’17 organized the show.

This year’s MELA featured over 150 performers and drew an audience of over 700 students, faculty and family members, according to the event coordinators. Radhika Jangi ’18, Sid Srivastva ’17 and Priyatham Vennapusa ’17 were this year’s emcees. The three introduced the acts, poked fun at each other and entertained the crowd.

This year’s theme was Junoon: The Power of Passion!. Passion is a motivation and inspiration that drives creativity, and this was apparent throughout the show. The performers expressed their passions for dance, music and the different South Asian cultures onstage.

“Junoon essentially means what pushes you to be your best, what inspires you and what makes who you are,” said Meher Irani ’16, one of SASA’s events coordinators, in an email to the Justice. “We thought it’d be an ideal theme for MELA since MELA is all about following your desires and doing something different.” Irani said.

Every year the proceeds from MELA go toward a different South Asian charity. This year’s organization was Asha for Education, which works to educate underprivileged children in India. The volunteer-based organization has chapters in the United States, Europe, India and Canada.

The core of MELA is dance. A performance by MELA of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance, opened the show with a mix of grace and liveliness. Stop Motion, a hip-hop group, danced to several remixes of Pharrell’s “Happy,” and So Unique Step Team performed a creative routine involving a group of wayward students challenging their teacher in detention.

The Brandeis Belly Dance Ensemble performed the Egyptian saidi style of belly dance, incorporating elements of Egyptian folk dance and shaking their jangling costumes to the hypnotic music.

Boston College’s Masti, a competition-winning dance troupe that combines different South Asian dance styles, opened the second act with enthusiasm and talent. The unexpected addition of a non-Brandeis team surprised the audience and drew students from Boston College to the event. According to Vadalia and Grandhi, this is the first time the show has had performances from outside groups.

Chak De!, Brandeis’ Bollywood-fusion dance team, performed a creative “Freaky Friday” routine—labeled thus by the introductory video—in which two of the choreographers, Urann Chan ’16 and Pooja Gupta ’16, danced as if they had switched bodies, with audio that allowed Chan to mouth Gupta’s words and vice versa.

Students also showed their talents beyond dance with other acts, including two slam poems. The first was “The Brown Identity” by Rohan Narayanan ’15, which described his struggles as an aspiring filmmaker dealing with how Indian people are portrayed in Western media, including film and television.

Later in the show, Naman Patel ’15 presented his spoken word piece “Anagram.” The piece explored Patel’s Indian identity, comparing his two eyes to the two Is in the word “India.”

Jangi took a break from her emcee duties to perform the song “Suraj Hua Maddham” with Karan Malik ’15 from the popular Bollywood film Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Malik sang the part of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Kahn while Jangi sang Kajol’s. Jangi’s clear and melodic voice blended perfectly with Malik’s alternately quiet and powerful vocals, and judging by the crowd’s enthusiastic response, the audience loved it.

The seniors closed the show with an emotional culmination of their time at Brandeis and with MELA. The 44 seniors were the largest group to perform and their bouncing Bollywood routine had the audience clapping along. There was also a dance routine showcasing Brandeis’ graduate students’ dance talents, with moves and music telling the story of falling in love, which was in line with the night’s theme.

The show’s organizers were impressed by the end result. “There were certain small mishaps we had to deal with throughout the show, but for an event of this magnitude those little issues were not only expected but inconsequential,” Vadalia wrote in an email to the Justice. “We were so ecstatic that the show went the way it did: flawless!”