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Asian festival at Sydney Opera House

Paritosh Parasher in Sydney

The Sydney Opera House is reverberating with the sounds of tablas, sarods, guqins, cymbals and other Asian musical instruments as the Asian Music and Arts Festival opened in this Australian city on Friday.

A number of artistes are set to enthral the audience with their performances in Indian classical dance and music in the three-day festival that entered its sixth year.

Leading the charge will be the Sydney-based Lingalayam Dance Company led by Annadavalli, one of the leading Indian classical dance artistes in Australia.

Lingalayam will showcase their latest production, 'Kuruntokai -- The Interior Landscape', based on an anthology of 400 Tamil love poems that date back to the fourth century AD. Aravinth Kumarasamy's live orchestra will be the other feature of the dance production choreographed by Anandavalli.

Lingalayam has made a special place for itself in Sydney's cultural scene. It was founded in 1987 and has been teaching young aspirants the basics of Indian classical dance. The first production of this company hit the stage in 1996.

The opening day also held a free late night for followers of eastern music as the music group Songket played Indian fusion sounds.

Indian tabla artiste Bobby Singh is performing with percussion group Dha in the Lower Concourse Bar of the Opera House on Saturday night. Singh also teamed up with sarod player Ashok Roy to stage Afternoon Ragas in the festival on the same day.

Besides various forms of classical Asian dance and music, the festival is hosting both contemporary and traditional works in drama and other forms of arts from all over Asia.

Hanging Onto the Tail of a Goat by Tenzing Tsewang from Tibet is one such play that was listed for Friday night. It has been explained as a "magical story of humour and sadness".

In this autobiographical narration, Tsewang talks about his migration from Tibet to the spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama's monastery in Dharamsala in India's Himachal Pradesh state. His journey does not finish there and continues to finally culminate on Australian shores.

Well-known Chinese guqin player Lin You Ren also performed Eastern Strings on Saturday with his seven-stringed guqin. This ancient musical instrument is often referred to as the qin.

Leading exponent of Javanese music and dance Vi King Lim will present Langen Suka on Sunday. It is based on a Javanese interpretation of the Indian mythological epic Ramayana.

Indo-Asian News Service

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