04 December,2020 06:59 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Pic/Sameer Markande
A flock of crows find the perfect resting place atop cutouts of kabaddi players and Abhishek Bachchan on Carter Road, Bandra.
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For the past 37 years, The Stop-Gaps Cultural Academy's festival of festive music has been the longest-running festival at the NCPA. This year, as the festival goes virtual, it promises to bring to you music with the same enthusiasm and drive that has enthralled its audiences for decades.
Chairman and music director Alfred D'Souza told this diarist, "We didn't want the festival to have a break because we know how much people look forward to it. Every year, crowds gather from across the country and the tickets are always sold out at box-office openings. This year, as the event goes online, 'A homemade festival of festive music,' will bring 16 choirs from different corners of India - from Dimapur in Nagaland to Chennai - on one platform." Every choir will bring a flavour of its own with compositions, old and new, traditional and contemporary, he added. "A lot of hard work has gone into this. We are grateful to Furtados Music and Xavier's Institute of Communication for their support."
Non-profit Rising Flame has launched a campaign to amplify the stories of women with disabilities speaking against sexual harassment. Apart from publishing first-person accounts of seven disabled women in leadership positions across five countries, the platform is now hosting a webinar on December 7. The session will have its founder and executive director, stand-up comedian Nidhi Goyal in conversation with lawyers Vrinda Grover, Amba Salelkar, and Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee. "The idea behind this session is to acknowledge and accept that sexual harassment continues to exist, and that women with disabilities cannot remain invisible. Our experts will speak about the #MeToo movement, why many women chose the social movement over legal recourse and what happens when we end our silence. And how then, do we create safeguards that ensure the full participation of women with disabilities in a safe and dignified work environment," Goyal told this diarist. Visit risingflame.org to register for the session.
The process of creating music is an organic one, where artistes usually put their minds together to compose a track, taking technical help from producers to give it a certain finesse. But the pandemic had brought this exercise to a halt, since the lockdown forced musicians to work largely in isolation. It's what TM Krishna kept in mind when he conceived the Friends in Concert event, which went live yesterday and will be available for viewing for 72 hours. "Artistes thrive on sharing music with each other, and sharing conversations on subjects like a certain raga. That's how the creativity happens, and that's where the life of music lies," the Carnatic music maestro told this diarist. "But this process was shut down when the lockdown was imposed, which is when a sense of isolation started developing. Sadhana can only happen when there is mental leisure, which was absent [in that period]," he added. Krishna thus decided to bring together 12 artistes he has shared the stage with at different points in his career, including Poongulam Subramaniam, Sangeetha Sivakumar and RK Shriramkumar. Log on to friendsinconcert.in to get your tickets.
A play from a past edition
The Pitara International TYA festival [Theatre for Young Audiences] will kick off from December 19. In a digital avatar this year, it will bring five plays from Ireland, South Korea and India to young audiences. To be screened on YouTube privately for those who sign up for the festival, the performances will be available for 72 hours.
"From a baby crane looking for its mother to the iconic story of the water seed, performed by professional theatre artistes, these plays explore different themes. The storytellers will take children through magical worlds filled with incredible creatures and wonderful characters," organiser Imran Khan (inset) shared.
The early months of the lockdown saw nature reclaim its space, with the air quality improving, and peacocks hopping across SoBo colonies. This inspired Mahalaxmi-based artist Dr Gunjan Shrivastava to create a collection of cyanotypes titled The Natural Resurrection, Narratives in Blue, on view as an online exhibition on Nippon Art Gallery's website till December 9. The co-founder of You Lead India Foundation, who is vocal about sustainability, told this diarist that the pandemic shed light on how we had been treating nature. "Humans [and nature] need to co-exist and be part of each other's healing. During the lockdown, we saw the comeback of nature; I haven't ever experienced such clear skies here before and enjoyed the stillness without traffic. The exhibition is centred on this healing process."
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