'Serendipity' in Goa: A Delightful Nine-Day Date With Art & Artists
The festival offered visitors a range of music, dance, theatre, culinary and visual art experiences.
Scenes From the eternal story Ramayana at the Crafted Expressions: Embodied Traditions In The Indian Performing Arts at Azad Maidan. Curated by Anjana Somany.
(Photo: Anjuli Bhargava)
Goa’s Casino Road, the Old GMC Complex, the capital city Panjim, and the sleepy neighbourhood of Dona Paula, all came alive for nine days in December, with the sixth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival. With its 12 venues spread over a 10 km radius, the festival offered visitors a range of music, dance, theatre, craft, culinary art, and visual art, experiences that only a few other festivals in India can match. Here's a glimpse of the festival, through the lens of the author.
A photographic presentation of Theyyam, a ritual art form of north Kerala. Picture curated by Anjana Somany.
Divya Warrier performing Mohiniyattam in 'Kahaniyon ka Manthan', a confluence of Kaavad Katha (the 400-year-old endangered oral tradition of storytelling from Rajasthan) by theater person Akshay Gandhi. Performance curated by choreographer Mayuri Upadhya.
Scenes From the eternal story Ramayana at the Crafted Expressions: Embodied Traditions In The Indian Performing Arts at Azad Maidan. Curated by Anjana Somany.
Lead performer Usha Barle in a powerful performance of “Pandavani”: a lively folk ballad form performed predominantly in Chhattisgarh, depicting the story of the Pandavas, the lead characters in the Mahabharata. Curated by Geeta Chandran.
Puppets on display at the exhibition.
The five Quinch Quinch Happy Hype dance performers with their DJ, one of the high octane shows at the festival, supported by the Swiss Arts Council held at the Theater.
The stage being set for one of the series of concerts at the Art Park, with a view of the Mandovi river, curated by Shyamant Behal.
Rani Khanum uses facial expressions, hand gestures, and kathak to perform "Mehfil." She recreated the old world charm of a bygone Lucknow through ghazals, thumri, bandish, and sher-o-shayari at a show curated Mayuri Upadhya.
An installation on old practices and materials used for manual roof tile building by Sanchayan Ghosh, an artist from Shantiniketan at Old GMC Complex. Curated by Veerangana Solanki and Vidya Shivadas.
Vidya Thirunarayan conceives and gives a hard to fathom performance of "Lives Of Clay" – spinning together narratives of ancient myth, harsh reality and the intimate truth. The show directed by Tim Supple literally leaves audiences with an imprint in the form of traces of mud and clay.
Emerging artist Anupam Roy’s contribution to the Panjeri Artists Union stands out in the visual arts display at Old GMC complex. A tribute to the several hundred trees that might face bulldozers as part of a proposed road project connecting West Bengal to Bangladesh.
“Text Matters”, a visual arts show, displayed the rich traditions of writing around cultural themes in the subcontinent.
(Anjuli Bhargava is a senior writer and columnist based in Goa.)
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