Kalakaar
May it be creative arts, performance arts, or even visual arts: we have something that will cater to all your creative ideas. This year, we have modified our aim. We aim to appreciate and showcase various art forms, especially underrepresented ones.
Our CAS Kalakaar MAD Project strives to celebrate diverse and under-represented art forms. To aid learning during this pandemic, we teamed up with Teach For India, for their 'Don't stop learning' campaign. Playwright Nikhil Katara led our first workshop, which focused on dramatic structure. Nikhil Katara initiated his journey as a writer with his own production titled, The Unveiling: A sciencefiction drama in the year 2011. To strengthen critical thinking, he initiated an MA programme in Philosophy at the Mumbai university with optionals in Kant, Greek Hellenistic Philosophy, Feminism, Logic, and Existentialism. His play Yatagarasu opened at Prithvi Theatre in 2016. He is a consultant facilitator at Js paradigm (a novel performance arts institute) and writes book reviews and opinion articles in the ‘One India One People’ magazine. He also attended summer school at London international school of performing arts. His activities inspired creativity and introspection, and his imparted knowledge was insightful and helped us understand the foundations of dramatic structure. He walked us through Aristotelian and Sophoclean dramatic structures and taught us how different modalities of storytelling affect content. At the end of the workshop, his advice was the most important of all: Break all the rules. As Pablo Picasso says,' Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.’
On the 2nd of October, the Kalakaar 2020 CAS Project organized a workshop on Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. This was led by an internationally acclaimed artist, Ms Niki Hingad, who is the Founder and Chairperson of NHAF, for students from the NGO 'Teach For India.' Niki Hingad has had several successful solo exhibitions in Mumbai where her art foundation promotes 'Art with no Boundaries.' She is an executive member at the Council For Fair Business Practices and has been associated with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. With successful exhibitions such as Shunya, Ananta, and La Belle Home, she is sought international acclaim for being awarded as the Best Female Artist by the 'Art Society of India' in the year 2011.
Although the students had no previous experience in this art form, they were able to learn new techniques and made beautiful shapes and figures, including flowers, jumping paper frogs, and butterflies. It was truly wonderful to see the students participate and create art with such enthusiasm, and we hope to continue spreading joy through such art forms.
Our CAS project, Kalakaar, aims to help the expression of art in all its forms, and primarily to shed light on under-represented ones. This time we partnered with Teach For India to bring the creative expression of Dance to them, in context to cultural music. Members of our own team, namely, Araiya Lakhotia, Isha Kanodia and Mrigank Das, guided the TFI students through an original choreography to the song, 'First Class', by Amitabh Bhattacharya. Our dance instructors took a methodological yet energetic and inspiring approach to teach the choreography by breaking down the choreography. There were challenges faced in this workshop, such as technical and internet issues due to the online platform, but all in all the event was a success because we all took something back from it: the ability to express yourself freely and openly through dance!