July 29, 2002
For Immediate Release
Rangoli Foundation for Art & Culture
Presents
‘Rangoli Festival of Music and Dance’
Saturday, September 21, 2002. 6:00 P.M. and Sunday, September 22, 2002. 4:00 P.M.
New Performing Arts Center, California State University, Northridge, Northridge, California.
The festival features two exciting evenings of new and classic works, including ‘Sacred Geometry’, with Malathi Iyengar & Rangoli Dance Company and ‘Guest Choreographers’ Linda Gold (modern dance), Gary Larsen (step dance), Murali Mohan (‘Kathak’ dance) and Nzingha Camara (African dance): ‘Dancers Like ME’ (‘Bharata Natyam’, ‘Kuchipudi’, and new dance expressions), featuring second generation Indian-American artists and ‘Aarohi-Avarohi’, an Indian music ensemble.
Malathi Iyengar’s new choreography, ‘Sacred Geometry’ explores form, movement, space, and time as evoked by the sacred diagrams, the ‘mandalas’ & ‘navagraha’, the nine planets. The iconographic postures and positions of Indian classical dances depict geometric angular relationships from the axis of the body’s center of gravity.
These positions, while defining principle angles, are also often attributed to various deities and are meant to convey their characteristic powers. Whether the product of an eastern or western culture, the geometric shapes, sacred diagrams, and the circular ‘mandalas’ are familiar and pervasive images throughout the history of visual and performing arts. They are most often cosmological: that is they represent in symbol what is thought to be an essential structure of the universe. For example, the four seasons, four directions, the planets, various divinities and man himself.
The festival features artists from India and United States including: Shivani Aysola, Renjith Babu, Ronald Burton, Sandra Chatterjee, Gurumurthy, Neewin Hershall, Lakshmi Iyengar, Sowmya Kumar, Shyamala Moorty, Latha Ramchand, Alia Rice, Shilpa Sethuraman, Sridhar Shanmugam with Bina Kumari Viju, and Sonali Scroff, Shaheen Sheik with Kyan, Padmini Sirish, Shankar Subramanian, Soumya Sundaresh, Ranjani Vedanthan, H. S. Venugopal, and Anjali Tata with Stephanie Adcock, and Hyun Jung Kim
Having successfully produced two festivals previously in 1996 & 1999, Rangoli Foundation proudly introduces a mixed bill program for 2002, that not only features the best of ‘Bharata Natyam’ dance by Rangoli Dance Company, but also draws attention to the newly emerging traditional and contemporary expressions and genres by the young second generation Indian American artists.
Rangoli Festival urges the audiences to seize the opportunity to share in the stories and dreams of this new generation through the many performances in the embrace of this festival.
Tickets: Two Day Special $26 / $15 Per Day / $13 Per Day, Students, Seniors, and DRC Members
Rangoli Festival is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Cultural Affairs Department
and Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Rangoli Festival is co presented by South Asia Club, California State University, Northridge, California.
This presentation is an official event of the 2002 World Festival of Sacred Music – Los Angeles, September 14-29, 2002. The festival is dedicated to peace, cultural understanding, and universal responsibility and does not promote or endorse any political or religious agenda. www.festivalofsacredmusic.org / 310 825 0507