Browsing: Indian Dance

There have been many celebrations for India’s big 70th year of Independence but perhaps one of the liveliest – and most delicious – was at the United Nations, organized by India’s Permanent Mission to the UN. When you have an army of skilled Indian dancers and musicians and an arsenal of spicy Indian street foods, how can you not succeed?

The event was the outdoor IAAC Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance which showcased topnotch talent from India and New York, turning the waterfront into a dance arena with hundreds of New Yorkers learning about the intricacies of Indian dance. Even Lady Liberty watched!

Indeed this passion, this madness for excellence is what Jonathan Hollander has acquired from his many visits to India, and he has used this mantra globally – with varied countries, with young children and with dancers and musicians across the world stage, always with a New York sensibility.

Hundreds had gathered near New York harbour to watch the Erasing Borders Outdoor Dance Festival but there was an Audience of One who must have truly appreciated the lively tableaux that passed before her eyes – Lady Liberty.

Indeed, the Statue of Liberty has seen it all, the abandoned, the political refugees, the dreamers, the wanna-bes, the huddled masses – but here was a joyous rainbow of colors, of bright-eyed dancers celebrating their ancient culture, their aspirations and the diversity of America.
If you missed this festival, check out the upcoming indoor festival of dance!

Gods and kings, past and present, tradition and modernity all merged in ‘Mystic India: The World Tour’ at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, New Jersey. This was the first Broadway style Bollywood inspired extravaganza to debut at NJPAC.

For many young Indian-Americans the show was a reaffirmation of their culture and for mainstream Americans it was an introduction to the vibrant colors, dance and music of India. The show, created by Amit Shah and the Aatma Performing Arts, features passionate dancers, musicians, and acrobats.

Missing India? Love Bollywood? Want to know more about the music and dance of different regions of the home country?

Well, now you can travel back to India without a passport or air-ticket – by way of New Jersey!

Imagine over 60 dancers, acrobats and musicians taking you on a wonderful journey to India, fueled by music and dance. The event is Mystic India: The World Tour at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Prudential Hall on March 8th for one performance only, by the noted choreographer Amit Shah, director of Aatma Performing Arts.
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The arts need creators, facilitators, patrons and an audience – and all were there in full measure at the IAAC 15th anniversary gala.
Salman Rushdie and Mira Nair both received awards for their contribution to the arts, as did Dr. Manjula Bansal for her contributions to medicine but also for being a stellar devotee and patron of the arts.
And the facilitator of the arts was there in the shape of Aroon Shivdasani, the founder and director of IAAC, who has brought art, music, dance and cinema to New York audiences for the past 15 years.

Where would you get to rub shoulders with Salman Rushdie, Shabana Azmi, Danny Boyle, Shashi Tharoor, M.F. Husain, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, Madhur Jaffrey – and the late, great Ismail Merchant? Well, I met all these topnotch names in New York, all thanks to a small, spunky organization which has survived and thrived by sheer chutzpah. It’s brought a mix of Indian cinema, art, theater and dance to barren city streets, making them all a natural part of American life.

Indeed, if you’re talking about Indian art and culture in the city, you can hardly go a few sentences without mentioning Indo American Arts Council or its creator, Aroon Shivdasani. This year IAAC celebrates its 15th tumble and toss year, and so here’s the story of the little engine that said I think I can, I think I can, against all odds.

In New York, you can expect the unexpected – fabulous Indian dance taking place under the trees in the greenery of cascading parks, right in the middle of joggers and strollers, office workers and moms pushing prams. All the doing of the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) which in collaboration with the Downtown Dance Festival presented free lunch-time performances in Battery Park.

“To see the dancers performing among trees at Battery Park, the many members of the public stopping to watch and take photographs – some even during their lunch-time jogging – was quite remarkable. Rama Vaidyanathan did her ‘Mayuri Alaripu’ in a Peacock Feather Suite that was designed for the venue and looks wonderful in it. Vijaya Lakshmi, too, did a peacock dance, but we were happy that it did NOT usher in any rain!” Guest Blog

Can you appropriate two worlds? Or to put it less elegantly, can you eat your cake and have it too? The Sa Dancers once again prove that you can, shifting effortlessly as they do between the world of business and the world of fabulous dance.
Their latest showcase at the Alvin Ailey Theater showed how effortlessly they mix their roots and faraway homelands with the here and now of frenetic New York.

The SA Dance Company took an audience of over 200 people on a journey into Indian villages, sitting on an imaginary slow-moving boat, then to Mughal India, and yes, out into the pouring Indian monsoon. The music was a wonderful blend of folk and Bollywood, modern and pop and the dance steps spawned from many different choreographies created a pattern all their own.

Lord Shiva danced the world into existence with a shake of his mighty damru, it is said, and we’ve been dancing ever since.You had to be at ‘Erasing Borders: Festival of Indian Dance’, a three day festival of dance in NYC to see how boldly the ghungroo bells ring and how feet and hands and bodies meld into a thing of beauty. What was eye-opening was the sheer diversity of the dance vocabulary and how it’s being interpreted by a whole new generation of dancers.
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When different lives, different experiences intersect, you get something totally unexpected and fresh. That’s the story of The Sa Dance Company – twelve dancers coming from diverse disciplines and filtering their moves together into something unique. Many of them are from Ivy League colleges and work at blue chip corporations but through it all they’ve kept their deep passion for dance.