CHICAGO: Anila Sinha Foundation (ASF) presented a lively program on Holi, festival of colors, through beautiful dance choreography with colorful costumes on Saturday March 23 at Cutting Hall Performing Arts Center in Palatine.
It is said that the tradition of Holi was started by Lord Krishna who applied color on his beloved Radha to make her look pretty and funny.
This program “Rang rangili holi” started with an item “Aaj biraj mai”, where by group of people of Brij are going around the village celebrating Holi by singing, dancing and putting colors on each other’s faces. This was followed by a series of items depicting festival of colors with different groups of participants from little children to adults. Some of the highlights were “Sakhi ri maine kheli shyam sang holi”, “Kanhaiya ghar chalo guiya”, “Holi khelat hai girdhari” and several others.
The program came to an end with a grand finale where all the Gops and Gopies joined Radha and Krishna in a Holi dance which was mesmerizing for the audience. All together 30 artists participated in this event of various age groups.
The artists who enthralled those in the auditorium for nearly three hours were Gurmeet Marhas, Deepa Devasena, Medha Bhargaw, Puja Saha, Serena Dhaon, Charu Jain, Antara Datta, Shiwali Varshney, Laxmi P Sarathy, Kamal Gupta, Raj Deshmukh, Manoj Bhargaw, Siva Shivkumar Vandana Karan, Meghna Karan, Rishika Singh, Komal Sharma, Anika Chandola, Adya Varma, Muskan Bhatla, Shreya Patel, Simran Mahajan, Tanvi Mathur, Tanisha Mathur, Anika Tripathi, Ashka Shah, Manya Gulati, Aashna Varma and Ananya Shahi.
The choreography was skillfully done by Kiran Chouhan, ASF Artistic Director, a long time disciple of great Kathak Legend Pandit Birju Maharaj. Master of ceremony Anju Lal did an excellent narration of the events. Music was specially designed and recorded in India for this event. Dr Denise Jorgans, Director of The International House, University of Chicago was the Chief Guest. The event was photographed by Dr Malli. This program was partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Chicago.
Commenting on the performance one of the attendees observed: “One thing that was patently obvious to al those present was that the Eastern culture, especially the Bharatiya culture, has developed and promoted communal harmony and love besides shunning materialism while a great number of other stage performances degenerate themselves to cheap marketing and rank materialism. We try to bring Heaven to Earth while they try to kill others to go to heaven. What a contradiction. Kudos to ASF team.”
ASF is a not for profit organization established in 1998 in memory of Mrs Anila Sinha an accomplished Kathak dancer and a pioneer in promoting the North Indian classical performing art, Kathak in North America. Since its inception ASF has presented numerous main stage performances as well as two International Kathak Festivals, one in 2004 and the other in 2009, well received by different communities and the students of dance and music.
Madhu Patel
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