Sharmini Tharmaratnam offers a set of new work for the month of April 2024 with the musical help of Gyan Singh, tabla master, from New Delhi and Indian String instrumentalist Govind Schlegel.
Performance; Bliss
(Sacred Poetry and Architecture of Dance (Kathak, classical dance from North India)).
The Performance dives deep into the mystics of legacies, heritage, nomads and gets roots when playing with sacred geometry; rhythmic mathematics, architecture maps of ancient buildings and Mandalas/Yantras. The different dimensions, deep melodious compositions, rhythmic plays of words and feet or percussive rhythm, peotry, will give an overall impression of Mystical Universal Bliss.
Sharmini is a multidisciplinar artist and kathak dancer from the Jaipur (Rajasthan) style, learned under the guidance of world famous Maestro Pandit Rajendra Gangani. Her vast knowledge about Kathak-Flamenco has given her a niche in the field, decades ago, being the first to bring Indian music and dance to the established flamenco places like Casa Patas, Madrid, and Peña la Platería, since 1995. Influences of Sufism and Rajasthani folk are flavours presented in the show.
Gyan Singh is an accomplished Hindustani classical Tabla player with years of dedicated training under the guidance of late Ustad Abdullah Khan, Ustad Faiyaz Khan, and Pt. Suresh Talwarkar. Gyan has played in various prestigious festivals like Sahitya Kala Parishad’s Jhankar Utsav, Khajuraho millennium festival, Maharana Kumbha Festival, Jaipur virasat festival & literature festival, Gwalior virasat festival & Dharohar festival, Bangalore habba festival, Mumbai festival & Mumbai Tabla Festival, Jahan-e-khusro, Delhi international arts festival and Spic-Macay. He has also played in Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s Orchestra and has been bestowed with many awards and accolades over the years.Technical needs:
Dancing space minimum 5m2, clean smooth floor for bare-feet tapping and spins.
Platform for 2 musicians, sitting crossed legged with instruments, stable, height minimum 20cm, 1.80 dept, 250
screen for dvd projection.
3 voice mics, 1 string instrument mic, 2 percussion mics, 2 flat floor mics, 1 ambient mic.
2 changing rooms.
Conference; 2 parts;
part 1; Kathak and Flamenco
The conference explains for one side the history and actual links between Indian Music with flamenco, and moreover Kathak dance and flamenco. When saying Flamenco, we think of the dance, but the word can separately refer to the music only, while Kathak is always the dance with the music. There are interesting historical links.
The conference will then show different concepts of rhythm and dance, and how to make a bridge between the two, which tricks from one side will come hand to the other side, etc. How fusion still copes with difficulties maybe also due to prejudice. All that will be discussed.
part 2; Sacred Geometry and Indian Rhythm.
Indian classical music is know for it's mathematical concept of both melody and rhythm. There are 485 ragas, or melodies and much more rhythm time cycles than in many other musical cultures, and these rhythms play literally with numbers. There are percussion-compositions where literally the numbers are rapidly counted by voice, before playing. There are many tools in Indian music that might come handy in other music styles as well. The time cycles are circular, I would even say it's like a spiral. We will explain all this at the conference, and how this rates to the sacred geometry and a sense of meditation.
Workshops;
1/Tabla workshop on Kathak-Flamenco rhythmic combinations.
2/Sacred Geometry; melody with mathematics.
3/Kathak workshop with rhythmic ideas of compositions, as well as theatric expression.
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1/Traditional compositions in 12 beat will be taught. We will focus on flamenco clapping versus Kathak clapping, and how to use the Indian system of clapping and counting especially when composing for flamenco and other kinds of music. We will also elaborate on question and answer rhythmic dialogues, and see how they can be made less predictable.
2/How can we compose sorely playing with numbers? The rhythmic compositions are like poetry; a theme is picked up and around that theme, all possibilities are made, then the bests are chosen for a performance, a theme or just like an exercise. How the creativity with numbers, different time cycles ( how to put a same composition into different time cycles?), velocity, etc, is a meditative practise, which can give even a better understanding of the abstract essence of the true self. How numbers can represent lengths of structures in three dimensions or more, how we can design time and space from abstract thinking, and how abstract compositions mean also emotionally something.
3/A Dance class with invited musicians. Musicians will see how with the visualisation of musical movement, through a dancer, can help in memorising compositions. Dancers think in movement and space in a different way than musicians. Here there is an attempt to get closer to each other's field. The Kathak class in itself will be focussed on the musicality of the performance, being the dancer like a musician, making the notes of melody and rhythm, visible to the audience.
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