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Art for all
Updated On: 20 February, 2009 06:31 AM IST | | Namita Gupta
Padmini Ravi and Nandini Alva have been organising Bengaluru Habba for four years now. The dancers turned culture curators talk about the challenges and the satisfaction in making the arts accessible to everyone
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Padmini Ravi and Nandini Alva have been organising Bengaluru Habba for four years now. The dancers turned culture curators talk about the challenges and the satisfaction in making the arts accessible to everyone
This year's Habba has a spectrum of events, from plays to virtuoso performances by veteran artistes as well as amateur groups. What does it take to organise a festival of such magnitude?u00a0u00a0
Padmini: We designed the Bengaluru Habba on the lines of the Singapore festival. It is for the city and for the people of the city. The only difference is that at the Singapore festival, people have to buy tickets for every performance whereas here all live performances are free. Our festival is for young people, especially techies, who hardly have the time to experience and explore culture.
Every year, we put our heart and soul into this festival. We find the sponsors. We finaliseu00a0 venues for events spanning three weeks of the Habba. Last year, we had plans for a Sufi programme and a little Bollywood fun, which was a request from a few corporate organisations. We had put in 8 months of dedicated work. The postponement of the Habba was not only sad, but it also very inconvenient as it meant reworking schedules of busy artistes. But the support from the artistes and the response from people have kept us going. This time, we have 50 performances over 9 days at 15 venues across Bangalore. There are musicians, theatre artists, classical dancers and folk artistes. There is a photography exhibition too.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
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Woman of action: Padmini Ravi |
Padmini: We designed the Bengaluru Habba on the lines of the Singapore festival. It is for the city and for the people of the city. The only difference is that at the Singapore festival, people have to buy tickets for every performance whereas here all live performances are free. Our festival is for young people, especially techies, who hardly have the time to experience and explore culture.
Every year, we put our heart and soul into this festival. We find the sponsors. We finaliseu00a0 venues for events spanning three weeks of the Habba. Last year, we had plans for a Sufi programme and a little Bollywood fun, which was a request from a few corporate organisations. We had put in 8 months of dedicated work. The postponement of the Habba was not only sad, but it also very inconvenient as it meant reworking schedules of busy artistes. But the support from the artistes and the response from people have kept us going. This time, we have 50 performances over 9 days at 15 venues across Bangalore. There are musicians, theatre artists, classical dancers and folk artistes. There is a photography exhibition too.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
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