Showcasing several stars and stalwarts of the nation from various fields of Indian performing art traditions, Shreshtha Bharat Sanskriti Samagam, a five-day festival of music, dance, drama, folk arts, puppetry, tribal arts and allied arts, will kick off in the city on Tuesday.
The mega event is being hosted by the Kendra Sangeet Natak Akademi, India’s national academy for performing arts under the Ministry of Culture with support of the Odisha Government.
“Shreshtha Bharat Sanskriti Samagam is a specially designed series of festivals that would be staged across the country featuring many of the great performers and scholars from the field of music, dance, drama, folk and tribal arts, puppetry and allied traditions of India. Such series of congregations would hopefully go a long way in the furtherance of the Akademi’s mission to strengthen and propagate all that is living and life-sustaining in India’s culture. Bhubaneswar would witness the launch of the series at Rabindra Mandap and Bhanja Kala Mandap on Tuesday,” explained Akademi Deputy Secretary Raju Das, who is camping in the city for the festival.
While the seminars - slated for 10 am onwards every day - would be held at the Bhanja Kala Mandap, the performances would be staged at the Rabindra Mandap daily from 6.30 pm onwards, he informed.
The first day of the seminar would be devoted to music and the following days would focus on dance, drama, folk and tribal arts and would conclude with puppetry and allied traditions. The sessions would encourage interactions among the speakers, artistes and audience, he explained.
Among the galaxy of eminent people who would be attending the five-day festival are K Prabha Atre, Ajoy Chakrabarty, Shruti Sadolikar Katkar, VidyadharVyas, SharadSathe, Mysore Manjunath, Ramhari Das, Ritwik Sanyal, Yogesh Samsi in music; Sunil Kothari, Jatin Goswami, Ratikant Mohapatra, Gopal Prasad Dubey, Rajkumar Singhajit Singh, Purnima Pandey, Kanak Rele and Gita Chandran in dance; Ajit Dash, Dulal Roy, Anshuman Bhowmik, Satish Alekar, Nisar Allana, Atul Tiwari, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Devendraraj Ankur, Sachidanand Joshi and Samik Bandyopadhyay in theatre; SRD Prasad, Manmath Kumar Satapathy, Anil Saikia, Arjunsingh Shekhawat, Kaling Borang, VR Devika, DR Purohit, Mahadev Das Baul and Prakash Khandge in folk tribal arts.
The list of eminent artists, who would perform at the Rabindra Mandap include famed musicians Rashid Khan, Rakesh Chaurasia, Shashank Subramaniam, TH Vikku Vinayakram and dancers Raja-Radha Reddy and Padma Subramanyam. Similarly, Satyabrat Rout and Moinul Haque would also present their theatre productions in the festival, it is learnt.