Kennedy Center Shifts to Cultural Overdrive for “Maximum India”
By Howard Cincotta
Special Correspondent
Washington — Many of those planning to attend the Maximum India festival, a cornucopia of cultural events celebrating India at Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from March 1 to 20, may find they share the same mixed emotions of delight and despair.
The reason: It would be virtually impossible to experience every one of the dance, musical and theatrical performances, film showings, panel discussions, and exhibitions of a vast array of visual arts, textiles, pottery, jewelry and even cuisine. And even if you could put your life on hold and devote full time to the festival, you would come away knowing that you had barely sampled the stunning richness and diversity of art and culture from India.
The Kennedy Center will present more than 50 separate performances, events and exhibitions by 500 artists in cooperation with the Indian Council for Cultural Resources.
“This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see many internationally acclaimed masters of the many classical dance styles on our stages,” said Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser. “From the quiet sounds of the sitar to the raucous blaring of rock bands, we’ll present a panoply of the great music and musicians of India.”
Maximum India will be the center’s biggest program of the year. It marks the culmination of the center’s five-year exploration of the arts and cultures of the peoples along the legendary Silk Road, including Japan, China and the Middle East. It’s also the end of a 12-year plan to feature countries from Africa, Latin America and Asia, said Alicia Adams, Kennedy Center vice president for international programming and dance. Maximum India will offer a number of panel discussions on Indian film and literature with distinguished actors, filmmakers and writers, including one marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
WORLDS OF DANCE
The showstoppers at Maximum India promise to be its remarkable lineup of dance performances. “It became impossible to exclude any of the great divas of the many styles of Indian dance,” Adams said.
Two stars of very different traditions of Indian classical dance — Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli — will perform together in Samanvaya: A Coming Together. Mudgal is the leading exponent of the ancient dance art of Odissi from eastern India. She has revived the Odissi form and expanded audiences through education and workshops as well as her own acclaimed performances.Valli is one of India’s best-known dancers and choreographers in the Bharatanatyam tradition. “Now, as always, there are many gifted dancers from India,” wrote a New York Times critic, “but Alarmel Valli is a paragon.”
Daksha Sheth, the first woman soloist in the ancient martial dance form from eastern India called Chhau, will combine many different dance traditions in a contemporary dance-theater work called Sarpagati: The Way of the Serpent, which is a landmark piece in modern Indian dance. “Over the years, I trained in several martial art forms from all over the country, and out of this I evolved my own language in dance,” she told India Today.
Two dance companies from outside India will perform, reflecting the cultural strength of the Indian diaspora. Ragamala, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a leading practitioner of Bharatanatyam dance. From Washington, the Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company reflects the different identities of young South Asians by combining traditional forms with modern dance.
“We did a lot of research and attended many performances to make the choices that would give audiences an overview of the culture,” said the Kennedy Center’s Adams.
THEATER AND MUSIC
Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra will give three performances as part of Maximum India. One is a composition written especially for the festival by composer and tabla player Zahir Hussain. He will perform on tabla with the orchestra under conductor Christoph Eschenbach in music that combines Hindu ragas, Sufi kalam and Christian church music.
The woman known as “the Ghazal Queen,” Vatsala Mehra, will perform, as will “the Raga Pianist,” Utsav Lal.
The Kennedy Center’s smaller Terrace Theater will host contemporary rock, jazz and other music that blends different genres. Among the performers: guitar, violin, bass and vocals by Emergence from Tamil-Nadu; tabla player Suphala; jazz from Indo-Pak Coalition; drummer and composer Sunny Jain; and music producers D.J. Rekha and Panjabi MC.
A musical and theatrical highlight will be The Manganiyar Seduction by a Muslim Sufi sect from the Rajasthan desert in northwest India, under the Indian director Roysten Abel. The 43 musicians are seated in 36 stacked red cubicles that become illuminated individually and collectively as the music unfolds in an unusual multimedia experience.
“The lyrics are all Sufi couplets, and it’s all going out to the universe or God,” Abel said in an interview on National Public Radio. “The performance is something of a hybrid — not exactly a concert, not exactly a theater piece, but something designed to illuminate and make the audience feel the music of the Manganiyars.”
FILM, LITERATURE, EXHIBITS
Along with film showings, well-known Indian actors and filmmakers from Bollywood and elsewhere will appear for panel discussions on the Indian film industry and the portrayal of women in film. They will include actors Nandita Das, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore; film directors Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Ketan Mehta; and film scholar Dilip Basu.
Indian film star Naseeruddin Shah and his Motley Theatre Group will perform three theater pieces based on the short stories of writer Ismat Khanum Chughtai.
Another panel will explore the relationship between Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore through their letters and articles. The tension between literature and politics will bring together three very different writers: novelist Salman Rushdie, commentator and novelist Nayantara Sahgal and British-born journalist and writer William Dalrymple.
Exhibitions of contemporary art will abound throughout the Kennedy Center’s halls and galleries, featuring displays of the color and variety of the Indian sari, the pankha or hand fan, and magnificent gems and jewelry from Jaipur’s Gem Palace.
Announcing the Maximum India festival in New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer said, “These people-to-people ties are what bind our two countries together.”
