If Chennai city has the distinguished sabha tradition of holding dance and music soirees throughout the holy month of Margazhi each year, the metropolis of Kolkata has grown and sustained a six-decade-old tradition of annual whole-night music concerts, terminating with the glorious Republic Day sunrise. What began in 1952 with sundry music lovers getting together to enjoy January evening's touch of cold with crystal clear classical melodies, soon gathered momentum with Narendra Singh Singhi's offer of his palatial residence precincts at Singhi Park on Dover Lane as the earmarked venue. Before long, the enthusiastic listeners made it four consecutive whole night functions every January with overwhelming demand for tickets, laced the ragas with classical dance cadenza as per audience request and shifted the location to the more commodious Nazrul Mancha. The rest, as they say, is history.
A Festival of Indian Classical Dance presented by the Dover Lane Music Conference and the Dover Lane Music Academy - both still functioning from the haloed original precincts - is now a separate and more manageable 3-day offering of four dance styles daily, barring three forms on the last evening in order to close with a celebrity dancer, allotted unlimited time. While last year the final dancer was the youthful Kathak prodigy Vishal Krishna from Banaras, this year it was Sujata Mohapatra, whose dance style was honed over 18 long years by the legendary guru Kelucharan Mohapatra after Orissa's temple friezes of engraved danseuses.
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September 3 is the founding day of Srjan. As Srjan gears up to conduct the 23rd edition of the Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Award Festival from September 5 to 9, 2016 at Rabindra Mandap, Bhubaneswar, its director Guru Ratikant Mohapatra shares his thoughts as an organizer and choreographer. In a place that has dance programs and festivals through the year, what do you think makes GKMA Festival special / stand out from the rest?The popularity of our festival can be gauged by the near riot conditions outside the hall among those who do not have invitation cards. Over the years the audience has had a taste of the meticulous preparations made for every minute of this five day festival. The audience keeps coming back, in overflowing numbers, because they have experienced the “perfectionist” attitude of our organization.
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"We are our choices.
Build yourself a great story."- Jeff Bezos, Founder of AMAZON "I am the me I choose to be."- Actor Sidney Poitier
The month of August brought 31 days of nonstop activity for my home town. Officially founded 379 years ago, the MADRAS WEEK celebrations have expanded to fill the entire month! Alongside India's 70th Independence Day celebrations, August turned out to be overflowing with social and cultural activity.
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Manipuri Nartanalaya celebrated the birth centenary of Guru Bipin Singh with Kathokchaba on August 23 and 25, 2017 in Kolkata. On the occasion of his 100th birthday celebrations, we pay tribute to the great visionary. Soon after the All India Dance seminar in April 1958 at Vigyan Bhavan, convened by Sangeet Natak Akademi, where I had seen Guru Bipin Singh's presentation of Manipuri dances with the Jhaveri sisters, establishing it as a classical dance form, I got an opportunity to visit Manipur with a research team of Devi Lal Samar's Bharatiya Lok Kala Mandal, Udaipur.
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Treated to so many run of the mill variety of Kathak recitals, the sheer elegance and understated beauty of Divya Goswami Dikshit’s Kathak recital at the Stein auditorium, Delhi, came as a heart warming experience. Under the tutelage of Guru Munna Shukla of the Lucknow Gharana for the last few years, the evolved maturity of Divya’s dance became obvious right from the start with the Meera Bai Pad wherein the protagonist expresses her total absorption with Banke Bihari deity of Brindavan. Not a redundant move or eye glance marred the dancer’s complete concentration in paying homage to the Lord. That the musical accompaniment with Shakeel Ahmed (tabla), Amrita Mazumdar (vocal), Ghanashyam Sisodia (sitar), Kiran Kumar (flute), with Padhant by Jyotsna Banerjee had the sur-filled melody with all the classical virtues, added to the performance.
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Dancers are being innovative in trying to create all kinds of performing platforms for their art. Patronage systems are such that today there are more dancers than platforms available. Look at Balasaraswati’s time or 20 years later still, in Yamini Krishnamurthy’s era. In each form, there were a handful of dancers only. Say 5 in Bala amma’s or Shambhu Maharaj’s times; 10 in Yamini’s or Uma Sharma’s; 20 in Valli’s and now 200! Every bio-data boasts of awards, rewards, tours and titles. It seems it has never been so good for the dance and dancers. India is dancing! And celebrating special occasions are dancers: Jigyasa Giri of Chennai takes her Kathak to Delhi, to perform for a cause while Ranjana Gauhar of Delhi brings artistes from all over India to showcase in her Saare Jahan Se Acha festival. A Kalari initiative next to Adishakti in Pondicherry premieres its work called BHU and to BHU (Benaras Hindu University) comes ace Kathak talent from Mauritius, Dr. Putanjani "Vandana" Purgus, to admit her niece in this famed university. In Baroda, Harish Gangani is all set to retire after decades of serving Baroda MSU Dance Dept., which his father late Guru Pt. Sundarlal Gangani first came to when my father engaged gharana gurus to teach at university level - Tanjorkar for BN and Sundarlal ji for Kathak, Saxena sahib for table… And in Chennai, the season is agog with thematic events.
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