Bengaluru’s dance festivals are back

Artistes being felicitated during the Navvarsha festival last year.

The festivities in October are not limited to Dasara. Bengaluru is now ready with two dance festivals that have become trademark events in the city.

One is the Navvarsha festival, curated by Bengaluru-based Kathakali dancer Prabal Gupta and Chennai-based Saraswathi Educational Cultural and Charitable Trust, and the other is the Natya Parampara Utsav by Bengaluru-based Kuchipudi dancer Deepa Sashindran and her Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation.

While the Kuchipudi Parampara, now in its eight year, aims to showcase what each artiste has learnt through their parampara (tradition), Gupta’s festival aims to bring in senior dancers for the Bengaluru audience.

“The idea is to showcase a Parampara. There are artistes who perform their own choreographies but what happens to the Parampara they come from? We need to also present seniors so that their teachings do not die with them, which is why I try to felicitate them at the festival,” says Sashindran.

While the seniors are felicitated, Sashindran’s festival presents young artistes meticulously trained in a particular style of Kuchipudi.

Though the main idea of the festival has not changed, its magnitude has. The organisers had a small audience in mind back in its first edition. But the growing audience meant they hired auditoriums with more capacity with each passing year.

“Even after booking an auditorium with a capacity of over 600 people, we had rasikas sitting on the aisles during the show,” Sashindran shares her experience organising the festival. “And, our audience is not limited to artists themselves. We have people in the IT sector and others who have heard of the festival and attend,” she adds.

Usually held offline, the last edition and this year’s festival have taken the online format. This format has been a learning experience especially dealing with copyright claims, Sashindran says.

“In the digital format, there is a problem of copyrights. One of the artistes who performed last year had recorded a piece choreographed by her guru. The legal heir of that guru had an objection. So we had to re-record this artiste’s items. Now I am more confident of dealing with such issues as well”, explains Sashindran.

In fact, Sashindran now plans to post clips of previous year’s festivals on YouTube so the festival has a present on the web.

On the positive side, she notes that the online mode has helped her feature even foreign artistes, taking the festival as far as Canada and Russia. “Prior to this, we did not always have funds and would have to look after artistes. That was a constraint. But the online medium has made a lot of it possible,” Sashindran says.

Gupta’s festival has also evolved in various ways. Originally called the Navvarsh festival, this year it is being called “Azadi ki Amrit Mahotsav '' celebrating India’s 75 years of India’s independence.

“Usually, we would have the festival in January celebrating the new year but this time we chose October, with the venue being the National Gallery of Modern Art,” says Gupta.

When asked why he wants to bring only established names, Gupta says “The Bengaluru audience is a learned one. We need to produce the best on stage so we want to bring these big names for all Bengalureans."

To be held on October 23 and 24, the festival will showcase Karnataka-based artistes like Vasundhara Doraswamy and Anuradha Vikrant.

The Natya Parampara Utsav is scheduled for October 30 and 31, presenting artistes from India and abroad.