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Hi Folks,
I wish to share with you my happiness and pride to see an Assamese artist for the first time ever to present a paper and then perform a Satriiya dance rendition with background music of Borgeets and Nagera drums to a mesmerised western audience on 29 th January 05 at Tate Modern in London. This artist is Menaka Bora, stunningly beautiful young lass with the right eloquence to promote our culture to the Western audience, which she has been promoting single handed for quite a while.
As a matter of fact, I never bothered about Sattriya dance before I saw Menaka’s performances in London. Seeing her eloquence in educating the western audience about our Hindu mythology followed by her performances relating those stories, I am now converted to the world of Satriiya Dance, which is now recognised as one school of Indian Classical Dancing. Consequently, I feel proud to see her in her endeavour to promote that culture in the West.
Menaka has her fingers in many pies. She is currently working as an associate lecturer. She is writing a PhD thesis in global media and communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is looking at cultural globalization of Indian contemporary music in India post 1990s. Her work has been awarded Central Research Fund Award by the University of London. Menaka has travelled far and wide in her endeavour to promote Satriiya Dance. Her talks in Melbourne on the subject were broadcast by Australian National SBS radio channel in July- August 2004 and republished in the internet radio.
The seminar called Heaven and Earth in London was saturated with presentations on works of famous artists from previous centuries and one even with a homosexual tint. They were interpreting Heaven and Earth from their own view points. By the way, most of the presenters were Americans. And I for one, it was all mumbo jumbo. Menaka brought a breadth of fresh air with her presentation and her dance interpretation, which was superb. She was clearer in saying what she wanted to than most of them with English as the first language; they should, perhaps, speak better!
I attach an abstract of her presentation.
Romen
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TATE abstract.doc
Description: MS-Word document
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