Indian culture in Taiwan has come a long way since Jeffery Wu (吳德朗) inaugurated the Indian Cultural Festival in 2004. Tomorrow, the festival’s eighth edition will open at the Dream Community (夢想社區) in Sijhih (汐止), New Taipei City, and will feature Indian food, clothing and crafts, as well as a rare opportunity to see some top Indian dance performances.
In an interview with the Taipei Times at the Dream Community earlier this week, Wu said the festival came about largely by accident. While traveling in Spain, he bought a tabla and wanted to learn how to play it. He had thought it Spanish, but later discovered it was an Indian instrument.
Back in Taiwan, because of the lack of Indian cultural groups he joined an African drumming group to learn the basics of how to play. In his first attempt at an Indian Culture Festival, he resorted to hiring belly dancers as no authentically Indian performers could be found. Seven festivals later, his connection with Indian music and culture has become a full-time job, and he is now able to invite top-class performers to Taiwan and link the performances to cross-cultural educational projects.
Photo courtesy of Jeffery Wu
Awantika Dubey, a dancer and choreographer who works in the kathak style of dance, has been in Taiwan since last week, and together with Arupriya Guha, a practitioner of bharata natyam dance, has already engaged in a series of workshops around the country.
This is Dubey’s fourth visit to Taiwan (she first came in 2005), and she said that the workshops in Indian dance had proved very popular. Dubey has also created the centerpiece performance for this year’s festival, working with 20 children from Hsiufeng Elementary School (秀峰國小). The work is titled Peace Elephant and it tells the story of the elephant god Ganesha and emphasizes the values of community and peace.
Dubey e-mailed the music and lyrics before her arrival, and said that the children had already made great progress under instruction from their own teachers. “They [the teachers] have already taught the children Indian songs, so when I went there I was so happy. I was happy to hear their sweet voices, and now I am every day going there and teaching them,” Dubey said.
Photo courtesy of Anupriya Guha
Peace Elephant will be performed at the lecture theater of Taipei’s Chang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂演講廳) tomorrow at 8pm.
The festival opens tomorrow with a parade around the Dream Community at 2pm, followed by kathak classical dance performances by Dubey and bharata natyam dance by Guha starting at 2:30pm. There will be a market through the afternoon, as well as performances of Hare Krishna chanting and yoga displays.
Dance workshops make up an important part of the festival’s associated events, with the dancers touring the country. Two open workshops will be held at the Dream Community, with Guha demonstrating bharata natyam, which is a traditional dance style originating from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, on Sunday. On Oct. 9, Dubey will give a workshop on kathak, which originated in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Also performing as part of the festival is Srjan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Odissi Nrityabasa, a highly regarded dance group that practices the odissi, one of the oldest surviving forms of Indian dance whose origins date back to the second century BC. There will be a lecture at the Taipei City Library (台北市立圖書館) on Oct. 13 and a full performance at the lecture theater of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Oct. 15.
Admission to festival events, with the exception of the two performances at the lecture theater of the Chang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, is free. A small number of tickets for the Peace Elephant performance tomorrow (NT$250 to NT$400) are still available through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw. The Srjan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Odissi Nrityabasa performance in Taipei is sold out.
There will be free performances of Peace Elephant at the Dream Community on Oct. 14 and at the Dream Mall (夢時代購物中心) in Kaohsiung on Oct. 16. Free performances by Srjan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Odissi Nrityabasa will also be held at the Taichung Tun District Art Center (台中市立屯區藝文中心) on Oct. 16, at the Dream Community on Oct. 18, and at the Taipei National University of the Arts (國立臺北藝術大學) on Oct. 19. Detailed information about associated events around Taiwan can be found at blog.roodo.com/india_portal.
The Dream Community, where many of the festival’s events will take place, is located at 95 Minzu 2nd St, Sijhih Dist, New Taipei City (新北市汐止區民族二街95號). A second festival will take place in Kaohsiung between Oct. 7 and Oct. 16 at the Dream Mall, 789 Jhonghua 5th Rd, Cianjhen Dist, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市前鎮區中華五路789號).
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