Mumbai Rains are known to spoil many a things and disrupt a lot of events too. But very few events are made to be around the heavy rains of Mumbai. Last weekend, I was very fortunate to witness such an event. The silver jubilee celebration of Raindrop Festival of Classical dance by renowned Kathak Exponent and my dear friend Uma Dogra.
Uma Dogra who was recently honoured by the Government of India with the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award heads the Sam Ved Society of Performing Arts which was established in 1990 after the demise of her Guru Pt. Durgalal. Till date my friend lives that moment of loss and pledges to keep the legacy alive brightly burning with all that she does. In these 25 years of Sam Ved society’s being, she has hosted many legendary artists through the platform of the Pt. Durgalal Festival and has given stage to approximately 200 talented young artists through the Raindrops Festival. This famous festival is a unique concept of celebrating young talent by revering the potential hidden within that impressionable artist and Uma Dogra for the very first time envisioned it and put it into practice through the Raindrops festival.
This 25th year of the Raindrops festival featured varied classical styles of Indian dances, namely Bharatnatyam, Mohinattam, Odissi, Kathak and Manipuri and I was fortunate to witness some seasoned young artists from the classical dance fraternity. It is a daring initiative to organise shows year after year during the mumbai monsoons, hats off to Uma Dogra for doing this, all the three days of the festival had jam packed audience and looking at them one would wonder if rains can really stop people from venturing out.
Each day the event started with traditional lamp lighting ceremony followed by the row of accomplished dancers who performed at the festival. Over the period of three days Kathak dancers Rina Mehta, Vishal Krishna and Anuj Mishra performed. Suhani Dhanki and Mrinalini Biswas danced the bharatnatyum and Namrata Gupta and Rajashri Praharaj danced Odissi. Shreya Ayyub danced the graceful Manipuri and Radhika Nair did the Mohiniattam.
The auditorium was filled with classical legends and dignitaries from Kanak Rele to Jhelum Paranjape, from Darshana Jhaveri to Mandakini Trivedi all were present. Dance critic Sunil Kothari, Arjun Mishra, Kalinath Mishra, Nadira Babbar, Ratikant Mohapatra, Deepak Majumdar, Vijayshree Choudhary, Nilima Azim, you name it and all the names of the dance world were present.
The name Raindrops, justifies the true essence of this wonderful festival. Emotional Uma said to me, “It was raining heavily outside each day but the festival had dance lovers pouring in. I am so happy that the rains have never hampered the festival ever and I am thankful to all for making the silver jubilee a grand success.”
Normally I have seen that when a dancer achieves heights of success they are only keen to promote themselves so as to get more and more awards and honours, very few are like Uma Dogra who provides a huge platform to new and upcoming talent. This festival shows the graciousness of Uma not as a dancer but even as a wonderful human being.
Artscape By Sandip Soparrkar
