The Bhavāī of Gujarat: Religious Drama in Honour of the Mother Goddess of India

1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-60
Author(s):  
Katharine B. Free
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Urban Students ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Gujarat State ◽  
Religious Drama ◽  
National School ◽  
Mother Goddess ◽  
The Village ◽  
Palm Frond ◽  
A Performance

I wrapped myself in a woollen cloak against the chill of an October Indian night in 1980. Camera in hand and squatting in the dirt, I was surrounded by villagers and their laughing children. We all were waiting for a performance to begin. The occasion was a Bhavāī Mela at the village of Sola near Gujarat's largest city, Ahmedabad. The Mela was sponsored by the National School of Drama (New Delhi) and the Gujarat State Sangeet Nritya Natya Akademi. The privileged, urban students of the NSD were conspicuous in their reserved seating area, disdainfully rejecting the attempts of the villagers to join them. Far in the back of the crowd I glimpsed the still-beautiful Mrinalini Sarabhai, one of India's most famous dancers, swathed in silk and carrying a large palm-frond fan. Next to her was the white-haired Kailish Pandya, director of Drama at Miss Sarabhai's Darpana Academy of performing arts at Ahmedabad. With the first eerie, insistent blast of the Bhavāī trumpets (bhūṇgaḷs), an excitement swept the crowd extinguishing physical discomforts and personal slights. The fact that I would spend the next seven days sleeping on bare, stone floors to see this Mela, became unimportant as the actors began their intricate dances and spirited singing. From my first exposure to the Bhavāī in 1976, I had awaited this moment, a performance not in a university playhouse, but in a village.

Intangible, invisible and eternally nascent: Designing sound in Australian performing arts

Scene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Roger Alsop
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Visual Object ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
A Performance

This article is primarily focused on sound design in the performing arts. While scenography is usually defined as the visual/object elements of a performance design, it is often discussed as including all of the heard and seen elements: sound, costume, lighting, sets, props and projections. The intention is that these elements work synergistically to create a ‘whole-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts’, with scenography considered a wholistic discipline that embraces many aspects to support the intentions of the creators and the performers in a performance. Scenographic designers provide bespoke or unique solutions required to do this across specific briefs and budgets. While the discussion here centres on sound design for performance in Melbourne, it is intended to apply more broadly, particularly in developing a more complementary, integrated approach to sound in scenography, and regarding education and processes. This is to encourage a more global and inclusive consideration of the topic – to develop discussion, and therefore potential – of the manifold interrelationships in scenographic design in the performing arts. While there is no attempt to explicitly answer a key question or propose a defined theory, this discussion intends to illuminate various issues in sound design for performing arts in order to develop conceptual and practical approaches that enhance the collaborations and synergies possible in scenography for performing arts, ensuring that the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts.

Un altro ordine del tempo

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo Fazi
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Social Perspective ◽  
European Context ◽  
Analysis Tools ◽  
Artistic Works ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Order ◽  
Actual Point ◽  
A Performance

During the last decade there has been a radical rethink, in the European context of both theatre and performing arts, on how a performance or a spectacle is narrated and enjoyed. Artists like Milo Rau, Tino Sehgal, Marten Spangberg, Rabih Mrouè, Amir Reza Koohestani, and Richard Maxwell structure their practices on a reflection about the concept of time and on how it can be returned on stage. A different order of time is the second chapter of a three-parts essay focused on the analysis of the artists' works; the essay aims to create a dialogue between the artistic works and the actual point of the debate about time through a philosophical, scientific and social perspective. How does performing arts design the relationship between time and our evolution as individuals today? In which manner the collective tale configures itself through this artistic, utopian narrative? And what about the analysis tools we might need to effectively enjoy these works?

An Empirical Investigation of the Arts Audience Experience Index

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wing Tung Au ◽  
Glos Ho ◽  
Kenson Wing Chuen Chan
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Intellectual Stimulation ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Performance Risk ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
Overall Evaluation ◽  
Collective Engagement ◽  
Is Value ◽  
A Performance

Radbourne et al. proposed an Arts Audience Experience Index (AAEI) which stipulated that performing arts experiences consist of four components: authenticity, collective engagement, knowledge, and risk. Authenticity is associated with truth and believability of a performance. Collective engagement is an audience’s experience of engagement with performers and other audience members. Knowledge is concerned with understanding of and intellectual stimulation created by a performance. Risk is the extent to which a performance meets one’s expectation, is value for money, and fits with one’s self-image. We administered the AAEI to 465 spectators who attended a drama performance and 126 spectators who attended a musical performance. Supporting Radbourne et al.’s framework, confirmatory factor analysis found that audience members could differentiate among the four components of authenticity, collective engagement, knowledge, and risk along the two facets of importance and satisfaction. Regression analyses also showed that satisfaction with these four components contributes meaningfully to the overall evaluation of the performances, although collective engagement was found to be a relatively weaker predictor.

Bengali Ballads

1926 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-96
Author(s):  
W. Sutton Page
Keyword(s):  
Considerable Portion ◽  
The Village ◽  
A Performance

On the occasion of a wedding, a pūjā, or any other festival, it is quite a customary thing for a well-to-do man in Bengal to engage a kaihak or a pañchāli or yātrā party to give a performance or a series of performances in the courtyard of his house, where a considerable portion of the population of the village assembles as an audience, and sits, often right through the night, listening to song and speech, dialogue and story. It is for the most part by means of such performances that a knowledge of the myths and traditions of Hinduism is preserved in the minds of the illiterate mass of the population of Bengal.

scholarly journals Building Strength

Diacrítica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Telma João Santos
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Relational Model ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
A Performance

This paper presents a performance art piece, Building Strength, as a case study for a relational model in performing arts, especially in performance art. I proposed this model several years ago e already presented some applications as well as some reformulations. Here, it was not used to construct a performance art piece, but it is reformulated as a model used for me to relate with my own artistic practice, as usually done with another artists’ work.  

Emandulo: Process and Performance in a Changing South Africa

1994 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-261
Author(s):  
Thomas Riccio
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Performance

In the spring of 1992 the Natal Performing Arts Council (NAPAC) in Durban, South Africa, invited me to develop a performance based on Zulu traditions with their recently formed Kwasa Group and their long established Loft Theatre. ‘Kwasa’, Zulu for ‘it dawns’, was NAPAC's attempts to address the changing needs of South Africa. Two weeks after white South Africa voted in favour of a nationwide referendum to allow non-whites the ability to vote I began rehearsals for Emandulo.’

scholarly journals The Mobile Theatre Movement in India: a Success Story in Assam

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Ina Ross
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Arts Management ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Big Brother ◽  
National School

Taking mobile theatre in Assam as an example, Ina Ross questions in this article how professional, contemporary theatre can be successful in India, where it is considered to be a niche culture and economically precarious. She examines what would be needed for contemporary theatre in India to appeal to all segments of the population and asks how the theatre can compete with its omnipresent big brother, the cinema. A brief historical introduction to the mobile theatre movement is followed by an analysis of recent performances, complemented by interviews conducted with the major players in Assam's mobile theatre movement. The article shows that the success of mobile theatre is not to be found on the stage alone: it is also a social and societal model that is lived and experienced with the audience, and this ultimately is the key to its success. Ina Ross is a cultural manager with a focus on the performing arts. She has held the position of Associate Professor at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art in Berlin, and since 2015 has been teaching arts management at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi. She is the author of Wie überlebe ich als Künstler? (How to Survive as an Artist, 2013).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document