The artist is the creator of beautiful things

Art/Music/Theatre in Bangalore

I intended to post something quite a while back, actually there have been a whole lot of things happening around here, but it has been very hectic at work of late. Also coming up is HiPC 2004, for which I have been running around taking of a lot of local arrangements. If anyone is in town for the conference, drop me a line. I caught up yesterday on a lot of things on Unhappy Anniversaries (posted by Amardeep), a lot of outsourcing debates and discussions by Amardeep & Daniel Drezner, and India current affairs by Nitin. BTW, Nitin Pai's The Acorn was recently rated the best India Current Affairs blog. Way to go, Nitin!

Anyways, I went for this play a couple of weeks ago called Tumhari Amrita. It was quite a unique one, I had not seen anything like this before. The play was very simple, just 2 roles, played by Shabana Azmi and Farooq Shaikh, two brilliant actors. They just sat on stage and read letters written to each other over a period of 35 years. It was brilliant, they were both emoting so well, it was amazing. Shabana, I thought, actually had tears in her eyes towards the end.

A whole bunch of other events happening in Bangalore of late. Just concluded was a month long theatre festival at Ranga Shankara. This is a very new facility built solely for art & drama, in the memory of one of the most talented Kannada theatre (and also film) personalities - Shankar Nag. Shankar passed away in a tragic accident in 1993, and his wife, another brilliant actress and theatre personality, Arundati Nag, has continued the saga. She has contributed immensely to the popularity, encouragement and promotion of art, theatre, music & dance in Bangalore with multiple projects - Nrityagram is another such endeavour of hers, although now, there are a lot of supporters for this magnificient school of dance first started by Pratima Bedi. Nrityagram is also the host of Vasantha Habba (Vasantha means Spring, and Habba is festival, so the Spring Festival), termed the Woodstock of India. It is an all night music & dance extravaganza held the first Sat of every February. I attended this last year, and was absolutely blown away by the experience.

Currently happening is Bangalore Habba, a potpourri of music, dance, art, film from Dec 5 to 12. Some of the well known artists this year are - Pt. Shivkumar Sharma, Priyadarshini Govind (Bharatanatyam - she is absolutely brilliant, I saw her last year at Vasantha Habba), Pratibha Prahlad (Bharatanatyam again), Mallika Sarabhai, the Nrityagram Odissi dance ensemble (this group was superb too), Pt. Rajan & Sajan Mishra (Hindustani classical vocal), and a lot more. All the performances are FREE! The only sad thing is that a lot of these happen during the week, and one has to get the tickets a day in advance at the venue only, I believe. I hope I can catch some of these at least.

Coming up soon, Jan & Feb is the Zakir Hussain tour of India, I hope I can see him again. More when I have details.

Links on Bangalore Habba: Here, here.