Indian Conservatory of Paris to launch new courses

The Indian Conservatory of Paris, founded and run by a Bengalurean couple, is collaborating with a university in Tamil Nadu to introduce Karnatik music courses.

The non-profit organisation promotes Karnatik music in France by hosting events like ‘Paris Tyagaraja Aradhana’ and ‘Nritya Naada’, and conducting music courses. It was founded by Bhavana and Pradyumna Kandadai in 2015, and was previously called the Carnatic Conservatory of Paris.

Since its inception, the organisation has been offering Indian vocal, konnakkol, and veena courses. Now, with their collaboration with the Tamil Nadu Dr J Jayalalithaa Music and Fine Arts University, they will be introducing one-year certificate courses and two-year diploma courses in Karnatik music, tabla, and Bharatanatyam. The Karnatik music courses will cover vocals, veena, mridangam and violin. These will be open to students above eight years of age.

The first batch is set to start in September and enrolment will commence in June. Bhavana explains why they launched these courses: “For people learning Indian music and dance abroad, they first need to complete a bridge course in India before they can pursue a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in the same from India. But with these affiliate courses, this won’t be necessary. The students will save time,” she shares.

While the one-year certification course will enable students to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in India, they need to complete a diploma course to pursue a Master’s degree.

They have 70 students from countries including France, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Taiwan and Portugal. “We’ll be adopting a hybrid model for teaching. The students can choose to take either online or offline classes,” adds Bhavana, a classical musician and Bharatanatyam dancer.

She hopes the affiliation with an Indian university will boost interest in classical music and dance among French citizens, and foster collaboration between Indian classical, European, and Oriental artforms.

The details about the courses will soon be updated on indianconservatoryofparis. com.

Olympics approaching

The Indian Conservatory of Paris is collaborating with the Paris administration to curate performances for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The sporting event will take place between July 26 and August 11.

“The Olympics will draw big crowds to the city. Since everyone will not have access to the stadium, the city administration is organising different festive zones. We are one of the 14 associations chosen to perform at these zones. We’ll be showcasing classical dance, yoga, and painting,” Bhavana tells Metrolife.