Sangeet Natak Akademi organized the SNA Awardees' Festival at Meghdoot Theatre, Delhi, from 18th till 21st January. Generally once the President of India gives the date for award ceremony, SNA books various venues well in advance to mount the awardees festival of music, dance, drama, puppetry, folk dance and music, and also of other related arts. This time since there was a delay, the Kamani Hall was not available, so SNA had to accommodate the main performances at Meghdoot 3 theatre. I missed the first day performances of Kathak by Jitendra Maharaj, Kathakali by Kalamandalam Ramachandran Unnithan and Manipuri by Maisnam Kamini Kumar. I also missed performance of Yakshagana as it clashed with another performance. But next day I could see five major performances by the awardees at Meghdoot theatre. It seemed a marathon event as it started at 5pm and concluded by 10pm. One had to go to the theatre by 4.30pm to get a good seat as the crowds were swelling on account of many disciples of the awardees.
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On 25th December, Kuchipudi Art Academy in RA Puram was all agog with followers, admirers, disciples of Vempati Chinna Satyam, as O. Pannerselvam, Deputy Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, unveiled the 7 feet tall bronze statue of Siddhendra Yogi and garlanding the portrait of former Chief Minister Dr. M.G. Ramachandran to whom the 2nd edition of Utsav was dedicated along with late Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha. Incidentally, Jayalalitha was a disciple of Vempati and an alumna of Kuchipudi Art Academy.Vempati's eldest son Venkatachalapathy, who is the secretary of Kuchipudi Art Academy, has been organizing a weeklong festival from 25th till 31st December since last year. It has brought focus on the busy schedule and round the year activities of training, performances and maintaining the highest standards of Vempati bani of Kuchipudi.
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In a day and age when Google and YouTube- the presiding deities and the incarnations of knowledge- rule the world, Eric John Campros, a down to earth globe trotter with his heart and mind in the right place, discovers and nurtures spaces within and outside his beautiful mind, which encourage artists to discover their voices. A highly accomplished performer, choreographer, teacher, who taught and mentored thousands of students all over the world was visiting India recently as a mentor for India Dance Intensive 2017, an initiative driven by Broadway Dance Center, New York.
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Is Manipur - nestling among the seven hills - - the same ancient land where the celestial Gandharvas lived and practiced their sacred songs and dance, flying frequently to heavens to entertain the gods? The inhabitants do believe still that they are the original Gandharvas and Manipur's name indeed was 'Gandharvadesh' in days of yore. Whatever the myth is, the abiding love of visual and performing arts in all rites of passage and lifestyle activities bear eloquent testimony to Manipur's aesthetic forbearers.One would love to believe that the Manipuri boy who came from the nearby Kachhar village in Assam - with dreams of dance in his eyes and a steely resolve to dance all his life despite setbacks - was perhaps a Gandharva in this birth. Groomed by stalwart gurus like Ojha Amudom Shatma, Ojha Amubi Singh and Ojha Atomba, he joined as choreographer in Madame Menaka's pioneering troupe in Mumbai in the 1930s and soon opened his own institution 'Manipuri Nartanalaya' in Mumbai, Kolkata and Imphal. His impressive repertoire of compositions was marked by the richness of taal, lyricism of music, intricacies of rhythmic patterns and fluidity of dynamic movements.
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Given the uniformly large turnout for each of the five days of the 37th Natya Kala Conference mounted by Yagnaraman Centre for Performing Arts and Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, convenor and designer Dr. Srinidhi Chidambaram, would seem to have once again proved her mettle for immaculate planning and organisation. And as a rare case, realising that hers is not an easy act to emulate, the committee of the Sabha announced unanimously selecting her as the Convenor for next year's Conference too. Her theme of Sringaram -an immersion, with participants pertaining to different age groups and mindsets representing different dance traditions along with scholars and poets, brought together a wondrously varying landscape etched with myriad images on the subject of sringaram. Ironically dubbed the 'King of Rasas' despite its wide range of expressions spiritual/sexual and erotic/ physical/ metaphysical, largely articulated by female performers, Sringaram's greatest quality is that it is never monochromatic.
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Trending all through the year - end and New Year beginning were New Year’s greeting cards of and from dancers with their own photos, of course! No promotion like self promotion. Our young, internet savvy dancers are very good with technology. Since, no one else is likely to do so (promote them) in this age of FB and blogs, why not help yourself? After all, a bard said long ago: God helps those who help themselves!
Helping themselves or how to help dance reach out, especially in an over- saturated form like BN (Bharatanatyam), was the focus of Music Academy's opening day seminar on 5th January, and easily the most important academic discussion in the New Year. On small stage in its mini hall, nicely refurbished, filled huge talents like the one and only Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam, diva Alarmel Valli, activist-artiste Anita Ratnam and a rather reticent, yours truly. I was more shy than switched off, as I was being put on the same stage as two of BN current greats - Padukka and Vallima (as I fondly call them) - and I was also reluctant to add my two bit because I dreaded another drivel-filled seminar on a Friday morning of mealy-mouthed pontifying but thanks to all of us and an excellent theatre talent called PCR (for Delhiites that only means Police Control Room) a husky-voiced, polished gentleman, who moderated such diverse talents very well, so the proceedings were fulsome and informative (as many shared later, privately).
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