Westwood hall this past weekend hosted the annual Soorya India Festival, which is one of the prestigious cultural events in India to witness the leading actress of South Indian motion pictures Shobhana Chandrakumar and her students showcase their dance skills.
“Dance in traditional Indian culture permeate all facets of life, but its outstanding function is to give symbolic expression to abstract scripts of ancient texts and cultural practices,” said the events organizer and co-owner of The School of Indian Dance & Music, Botswana, Manu Manjesh Lal.
Manjesh Lal continued to explain that in Indian culture dancing is not just a mere spectacle or entertainment but a representation, by means of gestures, stories of gods and heroes taken from the epics, scriptures & ancient texts of the Indian culture.
Shobhana and her students Anuroopitha Sampath, Srividya Ramachandran and Asha Rema filled the stage with movement and colour performing with ease the intricate and complex foot, hand and head movements of classical Indian dance. Before each dance performance a story was narrated to influence the performers dancing styles.
“All the stories of the classical dance forms are taken from the epics, scriptures & ancient texts of the Indian culture such as the Sanskrit sacred writings containing
Hindu legends and folklore of varying date and origin, the most ancient of which dates from 4th century AD,” Manjesh Lal said.
Soorya Krishnamoorthy is the founder of the Soorya stage and film society based in India and seeks to promote Indian arts and culture and renowned for hosting the annual Soorya festival in which the finest artists in India classical dances and music participate in. Soorya has the professed aim of disseminating Indian culture and achieving integration through culture.
“The School of Indian Dance and Music’s main intention of its existence is to integrate the classical form of dances. We are currently preparing to create a fusion between traditional Music and Dance of Botswana and Indian Classical Dance forms,” he said.