Three hundred guests, a live dhol, and a dance floor at The Royalton that did not empty until well past midnight. A sangeet is a completely different kind of filming from a ceremony. It is loud, it is fast, and you cannot plan a single frame of it in advance. You have to feel where the energy is about to move and already be standing there.
The families had been rehearsing their performances for weeks, and it showed. There is a particular kind of joy in a sangeet that you simply cannot fake.
Following the floor
I shot most of the night handheld, moving with the dancers rather than standing back at a safe distance. The trick to filming a night like this alone is to stop trying to catch everything. You cannot, so you do not try. Instead you pick the stories worth following and stay with each of them long enough for the moment to land. The couple told me afterwards that the film made them relive the entire night, beat for beat.