Event Listings @ Pulse Connects

Performance By
An Evening of Sacred Music

An evening that brings together two award-winning international musicians, Ustad Harbhajan Singh (winner of Sangeet Natak Academy Award 2010) and Ustad Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari (featured on the Grammy Award winning CD “A Meeting by the River” in 1994). Together these musicians will share an evening of Sacred Music that is rooted in the Classical Rags associated with Gurbani Sangeet. Adding an additional flavour will be Kirpal Singh on Ter Shennai, a bowed instrument rarely heard in Yorkshire.

Thursday, February 23, 2012 		Kirpal Singh, Ustad Harbhajan Singh, Ustad Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari
NowHereThursday, February 23, 2012 Divya Kasturi
Svara Kanti

Svara-Kanti is the latest Indian/Western supergroup from visionary guitar virtuoso Simon Thacker. Four leading performers of Indian and Western music come together to present dazzling Indian classical traditions, Bollywood songs (including by Slumdog Millionaire Oscar winner AR Rahman) and evocative folk music, all reinterpreted with Western classical and jazz influences to create powerful and inspiring new sounds.

Saturday, February 25, 2012 		Svara Kanti
Elixir

Elixir, the second work from Sadhana Dance, sees choreographer and artistic director Subathra Subramaniam continuing to navigate the confluence of arts and science.  Elixir dives deep into our cultural relationship with water in a world where its scarcity is already an ever increasing problem.

Evocative and provocative, Elixir combines contemporary choreography, a powerful visual art installation, digital projection and original music with live song.  It comes out of Subramaniam’s own experiences in India and the High Arctic, as a science teacher in urban London and education director of the Cape Farwell climate change project, and in particular her time with Inuit communities in Nunavut Canada and Greenland.
Saturday, February 25, 2012 		Sadhana Dance Company
ISTD's 2nd South Asian Dance Teachers' Forum 

The Imperial Society of the Teacher's of Dancing (ISTD) presents it second Forum for South Asian Dance Teachers by its South Asian dance Faculty.  The event is being organised in conjunction with Kala Sangam at their Bradford premises.  The day will include a health & safety / body conditioning workshop, Grades 1 – 4 in kathak and bharatanatyam and discussions for teachers to share ideas on how to fulfil the requirements of the syllabus.  There will also be presentations of exam material by the students of Swati Raut, Nilima Devi and Nina Rajarani.  It will prove to be a most worthwhile day for both those who are new to the ISTD's work as well as those who are well acquainted with us as we have some important updates to inform you about.

Sunday, February 26, 2012 		ISTD, ISTD's South Asian Dance Faculty in collaboration with Kala Sangam
ICCR Exhibition: Tagore and Cinema

Poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, short story writer and painter, Rabindranath Tagore also had definite ideas about cinema. His stories had great cinematic potential as they were frich in visual metaphor and dramatic intensity. In 1923, Tagore’s literary work came to the cinema for the first time when Naresh Chandra Mitra cinematized Tagore’s story, Man Bhanjan, and then Grechan Green directed a documentary on Tagore. In 1929, Tagore acted in a film, Tapati, which has not been available to public but his style of acting on stage was phenomenal. He was far ahead of his contemporaries in his thought process about the cinema.

Tagore’s works are universal offering filmmakers a challenge to make the film as powerful, credible and appealing on celluloid as it is in print. His vast body of work has been made into great films by the most brilliant film-makers of the country. Around fifty films adapted from h is stories have been made in Bengali and around a dozen in Hindi and other languages. In 1961, Satyajit Ray made Teen Kanya based on Tagore’s short stories. Other films made on his stories include Charulata, Ghare Baire, Khsudita Pahsan, Atithi, Kadambini, Khokababur Pratyabartan, Nishithey, Streer patra, Rabibar, Chokher Bali and Chaturanga. Hindi cinema too has had adaptations of
Tagore’s stories, notable example are Kabuliwalla and Adhyay.
 
Open until 2 March during office hours
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 		ICCR
ICCR Exhibition :Tagore in Advertisement

Besides penning immortal poetry, novels, short stories and essays, Rabindranath Tagore also made a mark in the world of advertisements. Between 1889 and 1941 Tagore featured in over a hundred advertisements endorsing a variety of products including books, medicines, cosmetics, food products and stationery. Though Tagore never charged for endorsing a product, he always used the opportunity to forward the nationalist agenda. Rare advertisements in which the bard either contributed to the script or acted as a model are a part of this exhibition. Those were not really the years of a promotional blast prior to the launch of a consumer product.

And it is difficult to associate the personality of Tagore with the endorsement of cosmetic products - but he did it to push the nationalist agenda. Rabindranath’s endorsements were special because of his command over the language --- his use of catchy phrases and words and brevity in expressing an idea. Tagore’s advertisements offer a kind of meta-narrative of the growth of advertising in India --- the language, the coinage, the imagery, the desperation of competition and of course the beginnings of celebrity endorsement.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 		Arun Kumar Roy
Presentation: Tagore and Indian Cinema
Tagore’s works - poetry, prose, music and song - offer all possibilities to the creative artist. The filmmaker translates, narrates and interprets through the framework of cinema. Tagore’s works go beyond their space and time, the universal language of cinema makes it possible to adapt a Tagore literary piece for the consumption of an international audience ideally through the medium of film. Sangeeta Datta will talk about the various cinematic adaptations of Tagore with reference to the works of Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha, Rituparno Ghosh and other filmmakers.
 
Sangeeta Datta is a well known writer/director, independent filmmaker and cultural commentator based in London. She is director of Baithak, which promotes South Asian arts in the UK and aims to bring an understanding of cultural heritage to Brit-Asian youth through Stormglass Productions, which is dedicated to making meaningful cinema and theatre drawing from narratives which have
an international appeal.

In association with Baithak-UK and Stormglass Productions 

Tuesday, February 28, 2012 		Sangeeta Datta
A Moment of Mishearing

A Moment of Mishearing is an all-new eclectic multi-media musical production exploring the literary and musical ideas of celebrated Indian writer and musician Amit Chaudhuri, who with the five-piece Amit Chaudhuri Band present an evening of music, words and images in a show about memory, chance and a city fusing the literary and musical ideas that have shaped his life.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 		Amit Chaudhuri, Amit Chaudhuri Band, presented by Art and Adventure in association with Tara Arts
DESIGN OF DANCE - a performance/presentation By MITI DESAI

Communication through the external medium of graphic design led Miti to an internal expression of body design, rediscovering Classical Indian Dance. Indian Dance has been the key to an artist’s return to her cultural roots, symbols and world-view resulting in an innate understanding of culture and aesthetics and its influence and inspiration in DESIGN & in the becoming of a DESIGNER.
Travel with Miti on her expressive journey as she unites DESIGN with a presentation / performance of classical Indian DANCE - deconstructing the structure / symbolism of classical Indian dance and culture while viewing it through the peephole of DESIGN.
The dance expression is through the medium of Mohini Attam ( A Classical Dance form from Kerala – Southern India).

 

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 		Miti Desai