The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents The Legacy Series: Pioneering Performing Arts at the Gandharva Mahavidyala at Kamani Auditorium on the 9th of February 2024 at 6:30 PM. The series shines a spotlight on multi-generational families in the arts and the stories behind them. The first of the series celebrates the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, the illustrious Mudgal Family and their rich contribution to the cultural landscape of Delhi through performance and conversation. The program duration will be 2 hours.

The Gandharva Choir

The Gandharva Choir has successfully experimented with classical and folk styles of music. It not only specializes in difficult classical forms such as Dhrupad, Dhamar, Varnam, Kriti and Tarana, but is equally adept at patriotic, devotional and folk forms. Its extensive repertoire includes hymns from the ancient Vedas, compositions in the Hindustani as well as Carnatic styles of music, Rabindra Sangeet and modern experimental works involving the use of harmony.

The Choir will present a selection from their repertoire. The performance duration will be 30 minutes.

Panel Discussion

The panel will consist of:

Pandit Madhup Mudgal - Principal of the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya and Hindustani Classical vocalist, composer and conductor of the Gandharva Choir.

Vidushi Madhavi Mudgal - One of India’s seniormost Odissi exponents, teacher and choreographer.

Sawani Mudgal - A talented young Hindustani vocalist, teacher and Pandit Madhup Mudgal’s daughter.

Arushi Mudgal - A brilliant young Odissi dancer and teacher and Pandit Madhup Mudgal’s daughter.

The discussion will be moderated by Aditi Jaitly, Senior Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. The panel discussion will be 20 minutes.

Vistar: Odissi Group Performance

This dance presentation offers an experience of the traditional form of Odissi with a contemporary sensibility. It explores the possibilities that come to life when weaving the major strands of classical music, poetry and rhythm, each highlighting different aspects to create a multi-layered tapestry. Movement patterns explore spatial possibilities, the poetic aspect enables rasanubhuti and aural designs highlight the architectonics unique to each musical genre.

The group will perform the following pieces:

Ranga Stuti: A meditative invocation of the stage, a sacred space that is the source of artistic endeavour and makes possible the creation and experience of Rasa. With verses from Abhinaya Darpan, the dancers seek blessings for a fulfilling journey with the audience.

Abhinaya: A poem written by the 18th Century Oriya poet Kavi Surya Baladeva Ratha is excerpted from his work “Kishore Chandranan Champu”. The text consists of 34 songs. The special feature of this work is that each song begins with a particular consonant, and its subsequent lines also begin with that particular letter. The group presents the Kha champu.

Sphuran: This piece is a transcreation of musical impulse and motifs into dance movement and forms. Its basic impulse emerges from the musical note gandhara in Raga Jog, the vibration gradually transferring to the bodies in dance. At first sedate, the momentum gradually builds up, ending in a cascade. The overarching impression is that of an endless journey with ever new landscapes.

The performance duration will be 30 minutes.

KNMA presents Zig Zags to Earth, a shadow puppetry performance, conceptualised and performed by artists V Arti, Ankit Ravani and Adheep Das.

This shadow puppetry performance is open to all (6 years and above). Seating is first come first serve and will be open from 5:30 pm onwards. Museum entry will be restricted once the performance starts at 6:00 pm.

About the Performance

Zig is on an intergalactic mission to save his planet. He is searching for a miraculous liquid which leads him to Earth. Here, Zig discovers the magic of the water cycle. He has many questions for the earthlings, but the biggest one is about how we treat this life saving liquid.

Join us as we float through this Zig Zag adventure!

Artist Bios

V Aarti is a theatre artiste, writer and translator. She has an M.A. in Literary Arts & Creative Writing and her first children’s book is a forthcoming publication by Katha. Aarti’s work is centred around creating make-believe worlds for children that mirror complex realities. She is deeply interested in the metaphoric possibilities of puppets and is currently working on concepts at the intersection of arts and science. She has specialized in children’s theatre and has worked as an actress, theatre facilitator and Asst. Director in Delhi for the past 7 years. Aarti is also a core member of Khilona, India’s first company of adults performing for children.

Ankit Ravani (b. 1992) is a visual artist, illustrator and educator from Mumbai. He holds an M.F.A. from Shiv Nadar University, a B.V.A. in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts M. S. University, Baroda, and he studied textile design at Sir J.J School of Art. His work engages with responding to absurdity linked with the often overlooked, and what leads to formation of the self. He has taught as a visiting lecturer at NID Haryana, at HSEA Bangalore for 4 years and has led a workshop for the Kochi students' Biennale. He has written and illustrated for curriculums and children's books with Art1st and Little Light. Ankit has a deep liking for picture books, and the world of children fascinates him. He has been a part of several exhibitions and is the recipient of the Inlaks Fine Art Award (2022).

Adheep Das is a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He likes mixing various mediums and finding out what comes of them. Fascinated by science and arts alike, his interests take him to places that merge the two. He received the ThinkArts Grant for Children in 2022 as part of a 3- person collective. 'Moonless', a film he directed and animated, has competed at Dok Leipzig, Germany, and Dharamshala Intl. Film Festival. His documentary 'Khaalti Kaay Varti Kaay' competed at IDSSFK, Kerala. Some of his work has also been exhibited as part of the Kochi-Muziris Students' Biennale and the Wrong Biennale.

The Artists of the Festival are as follows :

8th December 2023

Anuvrat Choudhary - A western classical pianist with accolades in national-level piano competitions and a rich background in music education and pedagogy.

Anuvrat will be performing two duets featuring 14-year-old Martina Charles, a violin prodigy known for completing all 8 grades in violin from Trinity College London and achieving the Fellowship of Trinity College London (FTCL), a rare accomplishment as the youngest in India and the first in Kerala. The second duet will be with Eera Gupta, a dancer, trained in jazz, contemporary and modern dance.

Aniruddh Aithal - 25 year old Hindustani classical vocalist based in Bangalore with 15 years of training from his gurus, Smt Geetha Garud Prithviraj and Dr Ashok Huggannavar.

Akshatha Viswanath - 13 year old Bharatanatyam performer from Bangalore. A student of Gurus Parshwanath Upadhye, Shruti Gopal and Aditya PV, she will perform a production titled Maruti which is an attempt to meander through the course of the Ramayana from Hanuman's perspective.

9th December 2023

Ramana Balachandhran - A Carnatic veena soloist. Ramana started learning vocal and veena from his mother Sharanya and then pursued the veena under Vidushi B Nagalakshmi. Considered a prodigious talent, he was directly awarded an A grade by All India Radio at the age of 16.He is one of the most sought-after instrumentalists in the country, having delivered nearly four hundred solo concerts across leading concert halls and music festivals in India and abroad.

The Anirudh Varma Collective - led by pianist, composer and producer, Anirudh Varma. The collective is an empanelled ensemble with the ICCR, and has played with 150 different musicians & artistes from across India, America, and Canada. They have collaborated with some of the most renowned musicians of the country.

*People availing student discount have to show their identity card at the registration desk.

Echoes
Choreography: Aditi Mangaldas
Lighting: Fabiana Piccioli
Music: Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan
Rehearsal Directors: Dheerendra Tiwari and Amit Khinchi
The resonance of the bells awaken us to the now. A breath and senses awakens. LIFE awakens me.
Bells have been a constant companion of every Indian classical dancer. They have aged with one, in a way they have resonated one's life through the process of dance. Should these bells just be a part of a given tradition? Become a ritual and thus in a way be “dead”? Can they not be “alive” in the present? The bells in Echoes become a metaphor of resonance, of freedom, of awakening.
Echoes is an exhilarating, high-octane Kathak dance experience which explores our relationships with our ancestors. The piece is choreographed by Kathak icon, Aditi Mangaldas, who is renowned for her artistry, energy and for breaking new ground, adding a contemporary twist to this stunning form of Indian dance.
Credits: Co-produced by Curve Theatre (Leicester), DanceXchange (Birmingham), La Comete (Chalons-en-Champagne) and generously supported using Lottery Funds through Arts Council England.

Constellation
Choreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Lighting: Willy Cessa
Music: Olga Wojciechowska
Rehearsal Directors: Paul Zivkovich and Lewis Major
Lighting & thunder. Light & sound. The illusions of distance and nearness they convey in a sky that deceptively appears as a constant. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has been fascinated by the different images these convey, while their source is often one and the same. He seeks to highlight different patterns of sound and different sources of light that come together to create a constellation, a system where things are kept suspended and in movement by each other’s gravitational fields & contending forces. By the flow of light and sound emanating from darkness and their return to that state. All this with and through Aakash as the locus, the astral body generating its own rhythms and luminosity.
Credits (CONSTELLATION): Rising was commissioned by AKCT (London), DanceXchange (Birmingham), Sampad (Birmingham), Eastman (Antwerp), The Hat Factory (Luton), Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Dance (Leicester), South East Dance (Brighton), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), The Place (London), Curve Theatre (Leicester), Southbank Centre (London) and funded by Arts Council England and Akademi (London).

The performance A Magician from 'The Longest March’ is based on the story of a magician who has multiple characters and is trying to understand the layers of various marches that have happened across time and place. This performance is part of programming for the exhibition Very Small Feeling.

Murari Jha is a visual and performing arts practitioner based in Delhi, India. Working primarily with the performance arts, Jha activates the spatial mechanics of a stage and creates performative sculptures and creatures. His transmedia practice works with the concept of the body and the self, studying how they exist as both subject and object. Thinking of personal resistance within the purview of 'micro socialism' and 'micro power', his work tries to understand the correlation between personal and collective struggle.

KNMA invites you to ‘Jumping Into the Dawn’, a collective performance resulting from a workshop led by Jessy Razafimandimby of the same title. Over a period of four days, participants gathered materials from a variety of backgrounds and origins to conceptualize their hats, an element that is certainly indispensable for covering the head, but also for containing, maintaining and revealing a new identity to come.

Jessy Razafimandimby (born in 1995, Madagascar) lives and works in Geneva. His work gives new life to a world inherited from the past, paying particular attention to the history of interior decoration and ornamentation, as well as to social conventions and "good manners" traditionally linked to a conservative lifestyle and promoted by a classist bourgeois system. Figures sometimes seem to melt into the work, moving into new, complex forms that reveal Razafimandimby's interest in the question of becoming. It's not so much what we become, but with whom we become it.

Register Now

Join us for a walkthrough of the exhibition Very Small Feelings with co-curators Akansha Rastogi and Diana Campbell with Ruxmini Choudhury, Avik Debdas, Swati Kumari. The walkthrough will also entail an evening of conversations and readings with some of the participating artists including Afra Eisma, Anga Art Collective, Artreach India, Jani Ruscica, Lokesh Khodke, Murari Jha, Nidhi Khurana, Susanta Mandal and Yasmin Jahan Nupur.

Akansha Rastogi is Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Programming at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi, India, since 2011. As a creative practitioner, she is the founding member of artist collective WALA (formed in 2009), and is intensely involved with many artists-led initiatives and forums in New Delhi. Her research and writing focus on exhibition histories of modern and contemporary Indian art, institutional memory, museum studies and storytelling. She studied Art History at National Museum Institute and English Literature at Delhi University.

Akansha’s exhibitions, ‘Hangar for the Passerby’ (2017), ‘Zones of Contact/Grazing’ (2013), ‘Inhabiting the Museum’ (2011-15) and ‘Archiving the Studio’ (2011) have been ingenious for their curatorial thinking,  approaches and conceptual rigour. Each one  positioning and imagining contemporary art museum space in South Asia as an incremental site for the undigested materials and histories. She served as  associate curator of India Pavilion at the 58th Venice  Biennale (2019). Since 2019, she is leading a multi-year program at KNMA under the framework of ‘Young Artists of Our Times’ (YAOT), under which she has curated four exhibitions and thought-forms, the most recent one was 'Very Small Feelings' co-curated with Diana Campbell and presented at Dhaka Art Summit 2023, and others are 'Right to laziness... No, strike that! Sidewalking with the man saying sorry' (2020), Summer's Children (2019), Smell assembly (2019).

Diana Campbell is an American curator and writer who has been working in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, Bangladesh, and the  Philippines. Since 2013, she has served as the  Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014-2023 editions and currently imagining the 2025 and 2027 chapters as a continuous ongoing curatorial project which builds infrastructure and new models for contemporary art making and public engagement with culture. Campbell has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission-based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh.

In addition to her exhibitions making practice, Campbell is responsible for developing the Samdani Art  Foundation collection and drives its international  collaborations ahead of opening the foundation’s  permanent home, Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet. Concurrent to her work in Bangladesh from 2016-2018, she was also the Founding Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects in the Philippines and curated Frieze Projects in London in 2018 and 2019. She curated the 2023 Coachella Valley edition of Desert X with Neville Wakefield and is on the facilitation group of AFIELD, an international network of socially engaged artistic practices.

The registrations for this workshops are now closed.

Sunil Mehra is a Delhi based author, journalist, social commentator, television producer and a Dastango. He has worked in senior editorial positions with the Indian Express, Outlook, India Today and written books on Rajasthan. As an actor he has appeared in movies like Earth, Uri, Philauri, and the prize winning web series Made in Heaven. As a Dastango, he has performed at prestigious venues all across India and abroad to critical acclaim.

Pallav Mishra works as an editor with Jashn-e-Rekhta and is an acclaimed Delhi based shaayar (poet) proficient in both Urdu and Persian poetry. He has performed Dastangoi at several platforms across India and he is also actively engaged in translation works.

About Dastangoi:

Dastangoi, a Persian form of storytelling was brought to India by the Mughals and attained great popularity in the courts of Agra, Delhi and later in Lucknow. This art that died after the death of the last Dastango of Delhi, Mir Baqar Ali, in 1928, was revived in 2005 by Mehmood Farooqui and fellow Dastangos.

Register Now

The upcoming Earth Day event aims to bring together diverse voices and perspectives to discuss climate solutions and inspire action. The event will feature an expert panel of speakers sharing their insights and experiences on innovative climate solutions, followed by interactive breakout group activities that prompt participants to brainstorm and collaborate on climate initiatives. Additionally, a fun and engaging art activity in the form of tote bag painting will allow participants to express their creativity while reflecting on their learnings from the event. The audience will be climate enthusiasts, activists and professionals, including ClimateScience Community members and Young Campaigners from Save the Children India!

The event's activities will highlight the importance of science communication, the central role of youth in advancing climate solutions, and ensuring climate education is accessible to all. The event's panelists will represent different sectors and backgrounds.

Register Now

Open to all ages and styles.

Curated by Friends of ART