Penn State's Indian dance group, the Raas/Garba Dance Team, has been selected as one of nine teams to participate in a national competition in Chicago on Saturday.

Chosen to compete in the Best of the Best Competition, the group has already won two other competitions in Washington, D.C., and Boston last semester, Giri Shah, co-captain of the team, said.

The results of the previous two competitions helped the team receive an invitation to the prestigious competition in Chicago, Shah added. The other teams that will be competing are previous winners as well.

The group, which was started four years ago, has been invited to the Best of the Best Competition the past two years. The team is practicing for next week's competition.

"It's an invite-only competition so it's always better to get invited because you know they want you there," team member Mukund Patel, a recent graduate who still dances with the group, said. "It's kind of like going to the all-star game, I guess."

Raas is a traditional Indian dance usually celebrated during the Indian feast of Navrati, Shah said. But the 18 members of the team -- nine women and nine men --wanted to do more to celebrate their love of dancing.

"We decided to make it into a dance team, and we compete in competitions in various cities throughout the school year," Shah said.

Shah said the group was interested in seeing the kind of talent other schools had during competitions.

The members are all of Indian nationality, Shah said, though it is not a requirement to be on the team.

The team's manager, Krishna Nutakki, said he's very proud of the progress the group has made since it started in 2001.

There are three different styles of dance that will be showcased in the competition, Shah said. Each category will feature three teams that specialize in that particular style of dance. Besides Raas, the other two categories are bhangra, a traditional style of Indian dancing, and fusion, which mixes Indian songs with American songs.

The dancers will be judged on different criteria, such as synchronization, traditionality, theme, music, creativity and stunts.

The team is practicing two hours a day at least five times a week to get ready for the competition, Patel said.

Though the dance team needs to be prepared physically for the competition, it needs to be prepared mentally as well, Patel said.

"I think we're all prepared mentally for it; we've been to two competitions already," he said. "We want to do our best."