Students participate in a fashion show and dance competition at the Annual Day function of Biju Patnaik University of Technology. Pictures by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, May 5: Budding engineers set the Utkal Mandap stage on fire during the celebrations of their annual event, Allegretto ’11, and made the audience hoot for more. Organised by the All Orissa BPUT Students’ Association, the six-hour function was pegged brilliantly with an array of dance, music and ramp shows.

More than 2,000 students from nearly 95 colleges, affiliated to Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), attended the cultural extravaganza. While some participants showed off their choreographic talent and grooved to ear-splitting music, others enthralled the audience with their melodious voices. At no point, their friends in the audience stopped cheering for them. The glowing orbs and coloured smoke billowing forth from the tastefully decorated stage charged up the atmosphere. A dance group from Balasore called Black Diamond, which was the champion team last year, failed to impress this time. Although they made a good start, the later half of their performance was marked by lack of coordination and lousy movement on the stage.

Many others presented modern, classical and break dance. A fashion show with eight students donning super stylish, ethnic wear was the major attraction of the evening. The girls wore glittering lehenga cholis and shararas while their ramp partners wore embroidered sherwanis with matching churidars or dhotis.

Following the 10-minute long fashion show were high-energy performances on the songs ‘Sheila ki Jawaani’ from Tees Maar Khan and ‘Aila re Aila’ from Khatta Meetha. It was at this point that many students huddled around the stage, dancing and clicking pictures, only to be chased back to their seats by the organisers and police deployed at the open-air auditorium. However, many performances were interrupted midway due to lack of time.

Popular television personality, Sulagna Routray, anchored the show and kept the audience engrossed with occasional punchlines in Hindi and Punjabi.

“The enthusiasm and energy is contagious. Standing behind the stage, I could not stop tapping my feet and humming to the music. This was the first time I was invited to a BPUT function. These boys and girls are very talented and I am sure they are good at studies as well,” said the anchor.

Young singing sensations, Saberi Bhattacharya and Amit Chakravarti, who had made a mark in a music show on television, added to the glamour quotient. Even local singing star, Anshuman, charmed the audience with a musical rendition of the song ‘Mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu’. In the end, the BPUT students’ association gave away the “Youth Icon” awards to two engineers, Satya Prakash Patnaik and Vinod Hembram.

The awards for the best dancer or dancing group and best singer would be announced in a day or two, said Subrat Sahoo, a member of the organising team. “Besides the Black Diamond group, two other troupes – DJ Hunters and Sunshine — also performed. The rock band show and war of DJs had to be called off at the last minute because we had to wind up by 11 in the night,” he said.

The function was inaugurated by MP Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, energy minister Atanu Sabyasachi and food supplies and consumer welfare minister Sarada Nayak.