Rains Don't Dampen New York City's Saraswati Puja

[Guest guest]

New York, Aug 13 (IANS) - A multi-arts event dedicated to Hindu

goddess of creativity Saraswati here turned into a veritable monsoon

festival when the skies opened up but drenched performance persisted

with the show!

 

"Community of Creativity: A Garland for Saraswati", specially

commissioned by the festival of free events held outdoors every

August at Lincoln Centre, was severely beset by the torrential rains

that inundated New York.

 

Involving over a hundred performers - amateur and professional, old

and young, musicians and dancers, martial artistes and painters -

the event had been designed for a dry landscape.

 

Elise Long, artistic director of Brooklyn-based Spoke the Hub Dance,

working in collaboration with Lincoln Centre Out of Doors' Jenneth

Webster, had devised an event that would take place at multiple

venues around a pool.

 

Performances were to be interspersed with workshops in yoga, Tai

Chi, creative writing, painting and even knitting. The audience was

encouraged to move around and savour the many flavours offered by an

eclectic range of artistes.

 

The project incorporated presentations by several Indian classical

dance companies from Queens and Manhattan.

 

Long also invited them to participate in her own choreographed work,

loosely based on Kathak, which was to be performed in sections

throughout the evening.

 

And then the rains came.

 

The first onslaught ended in time for the various performance spaces

to be cleared and for everyone to expect that the worst was over.

The evening began as planned with Martita Goshen blessing the space

as she danced round the pool and set other performers, like Tai Chi

master Kwok Kay Choey, in motion.

 

Perhaps apocryphally, she was accompanied by Bhutanese Lama Gyurmé

chanting his Rain of Blessings, for within minutes, it began to pour

again.

 

By the time Trinayan Collective started their homage to Saraswati,

performers were drenched and the plaza was awash with water. Yet no

one, neither spectators nor performers, wanted to stop. Around the

pool activities seemed to continue as planned.

 

Children tried out the moves of unfamiliar dance forms, poles topped

with emblems like a blue elephant or papier maché sun bobbed above

open umbrellas.

 

As Nandini Sikand, one of the few dancers who participated in both

the modern and Indian dance sections of the event said, "It felt

auspicious, like dancing in the monsoons."

 

For a while their persistence paid off and the rains stopped.

Thejeswini Raj and the students of her Shiv Jyoti Dance Academy as

well as Janaki Patrik and her Kathak Ensemble and Friends were able

to finish their presentations in time for the procession which would

lead audience and performers to the Julliard Bridge for the finale.

There, all participants were to form a double circle in a final

expression of solidarity and homage to the patron goddess.

 

But this time the skies had the last word. The rain came down in

sheets and everyone scattered for cover.

 

Accepting philosophically what must have seemed like a disaster

after so much hard work and planning, Long commented the next

day: "As the old saying goes, if you want to make god laugh, make a

plan... Suffice it to say, yesterday's event did not go as I

planned - not even really close - but what did 'go' was

spectacular."

 

Source: New Kerala

URL: http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?

action=fullnews&id=7491