Tuesday 7 February 2023

Drishti Festival - Dance Matters: Column by Ashish Mohan Khokar

Drishti started off as a palm-sized art mag by Anuradha and Vikranth - a smart, smiling duo of Bangalore - some twenty years ago. Guru Maya Rao, the Kathak legend, sent them my way to get guidance. 


Anuradha Vikranth also helped compile list of main city dancers for the Bangalore special issue of attenDance in 2005/6. The Governor T.N. Chaturvedi hosted its launch at Raj Bhavan in 2006. The date was 4/5/6! I still have the car parking sticker of Raj Bhavan, so I remember the unusual date. I had somewhat known the Governor from Delhi days when he was the CAG and his nephew went to college in the same bus I took. Yes, those days VIP kids also travelled by ordinary bus with ordinary people!

This preamble may help establish how hard the Vikranth couple have worked to create a dance festival that in 2023 reached its 18th edition. Most people in the field even see success but not the hard work that goes behind. In Sahakar Nagar, they have an active school, with hundreds of students learning in assembly line, well trained and well run. Anuradha herself is an able dancer, who has in last decade come under the tutelage of Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam and this festival was a pre 80th birthday celebrations when her big birthday is on 4th Feb, same as Birju Maharaj ji too.

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