America
Indian cultural festival in US starts September 25
New York, Sep 18
The US city of Pittsburgh is
set to host a six-week long Indian art and culture festival "India in
Focus" from September 25, a media report said.
About 2.6 million
Indian immigrants in the US will be able to take part in the festival
that kicks off on September 25 at Gallery Crawl, Pittsburgh City Paper
reported on Wednesday.
The Gallery Crawl is a free quarterly
showcase of art and entertainment in which events take place at a
variety of galleries and spaces.
The festival will open with a
big street party with Indian origin Britain-born, New York-based DJ
Rekha, known for her distinct style of merging classic bhangra and
bollywood sounds with electronic dance music.
The festival will
have five visual-art exhibitions. Indian-origin Briton Hetain Patel is
making his debut with his work "At Home" at the Wood Street Galleries.
Patel
uses humour and pop culture in the form of videos and photographs to
explore identity formation for people with marginalised identities.
At
the same venue, photographer Nandini Valli Muthiah is displaying her
three photographic series that place traditional Indian cultural icons
in contemporary settings.
Apart from that, Indian artists Silpa
Gupta, Surabhi Saraf, Sumakshi Singh and Avinash Veeraraghavan will be
displaying their talents using new media to showcase traditional Indian
culture.
Photographer Gauri Gill and painter Sarika Goulatia will be presenting their documentation at 709 Penn Gallery.
Banglagore-based
Nrityagram Dance Ensemble will perform on October 3 while Britain-based
Indian classical dance group Aakash Odedra company are set to perform
on November 6 at the Byham Theater.
Apart from art and dance,
theatre artists will be performing plays from October 15-17. These
artists include Canada-born playwright Ravi Jain, Indian Ink Theatre and
India's Tram Theatre company.
Classical tabla virtuoso Zakir
Hussain will team up with the English jazz bassist Dave Holland and the
eight-member SFJazz collective to perform at the festival.