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About Ganga - Life as a River
Along with co-director Priya Srinivasan (Asst. Prof. UC Riverside Dance dept.), Ramya Harishankar now explores new structures within the idiom of Indian Dance in this production.
‘An article on the River Ganga sparked the idea of a river as a metaphor for life.While this presentation draws from archetypal symbols of the Ganga as Woman and Goddess, it also brings together a different understanding of the lives of everyday women. From Ganga as the mythological figure known for her relationship to the God Siva, as a symbol of power, water, and the feminine, to the movement of the river itself as a young bubbling brook, a youthful exuberant water and life force, the mature calm but deep water, to the lives of women such as laundry women, a sweeper and a prostitute. The various stages of women’s lives are thus juxtaposed through the symbolic image of river, water, and life.’ explains Harishankar of the vision behind the theme.
Most traditional Bharata Natyam performances are set to a repertoire of music composed or set over hundreds of years for the art form. In this production, newly commissioned music, using digital sampling as well as electronic mixing, have been introduced by Babu Parmeswaran, the Music Director. In Indian dance, interpreting poetry and story telling are integral and performed through the language of symbolic gestures, kinetics and facial expressions. Pure dance or movement is often an expression of musical and rhythmic melodic sequences devoid of any lyrical interpretation. Veering away from this technique, the Arpana Dance Company explores new paths in ‘Ganga’. D’LO, a talented poet worked with the Company to create Spoken Word sections.
This project was partly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fund for Folk Culture.
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