A tribute to the gurus of classical arts

Cultural Festival

It was truly a festival of Indian classical music and dance as more than 150 students of the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra – a pioneering traditional arts school – performed to a packed hall at the Kamani auditorium recently.

The disciples of eminent music and dance gurus rendered an array of performing arts from Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Chhau and Odissi to Hindustani vocal music and instrumental. The more than 1000 strong audience rejoiced every move of the presentation.    

This was the second year of Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra’s Festival of Dance and Music. The prestigious school, hereby, presents its finest students trained under its eminent gurus. Director of SBKK, Shobha Deepak Singh informed Metrolife, “We have started this fest with the aim of encouraging and promoting our students. It is not everyday that you get a chance to perform at the Kamani auditorium; so it’s a great opportunity for them and they perform with their heart and soul.”

The gurus who trained their disciples for this festival included Sonia Roy, Manjeet Singh, Jyotika Dayal Paust and Gundecha Brothers (Hindustani Classical Vocal), Charanjit Soni (Light Classical Vocal), Ram Mohan Misra, Shikha Khare, Urmila Nagar, Raksha Singh and Munna Shukla (Kathak), Biswajit Roy Choudhury (Sarod), Virendra Malaviya (Tabla), Justin McCarthy and Priya Srinivasan (Bharatanatyam), Priyambada Pattnaik (Odissi) and Shashidharan Nair (Chhau).

Principal of the school, Papiya Mukherjee, elaborated, “In Kathak, we had presentations of both the Jaipur and Lucknow gharana. Disciples of Urmila Nagar presented the former with a Swarnmallika – garland of woven musical notes followed by some pure dance pieces like Paramkavitha tukda and sawal-jawab set in teen taal.”

“In the Lucknow gharana, choreographed by guru Munna Shukla, we had a composition titled Samanvay, which means the confluence of old and new thoughts in the dance form, coordination  of movements by various dancers and harmony of sounds and silences.”
Similarly, in Bharatnatyam, the students performed an Ashtpadi in raag Hansdhwani, Tillana in ragam Mandaari and Keerthanam choreographed by Justin McCarthy and Priya Srinivasan.

In Hindustani classical vocal, disciples of Sonia Roy performed a Khayal in raag Bhupali. Menjeet Singh’s students rendered raag Bihaag, Jyotika Dayal Paust’s disciples performed raag Rageshwari and finally Gudecha Bothers’ students rendered raag Yaman.

The auditorium resonated with pure and heart-warming classical musical notes. Shobha Deepak Singh concluded, “It is an honour for the gurus when the students perform so well and the audience gives them a standing ovation. We are very happy to provide our students this platform.”