The Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan and Ranga Shankara are presenting a dance-theatre performance by the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie from Düsseldorf, Germany.

Event: Love | Death | Devil – The Piece

A Dance-Theatre Performance by the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie

Date: November 29, 2009

Time: 7.30 p.m.

Venue: Ranga Shankara

Age limit: 18 years and above

Tickets: Rs. 200 available at Ranga Shankara, www.indianstage.in and the Goethe-Institut

More information at the Bhavan: 25205305/6/7/8 or on our website: www.goethe.de/bangalore

The Düsseldorf-based choreographer Ben J. Riepe’s latest work is based on the five-part performance series Practise seeing beauty – Love, Death and the Devil that he created with his company in 2008.

This production starts off where the performance series with its different formats (installation, stage pieces, outdoor-performance) new techniques and means of artistic expression left off. The production is characterised by a synthesis of precise choreographic management of time, movement, space and context on the one hand, and the individual improvisational creativity of all involved artists on the other. And by a delight in powerful images and baroque costumes.

Aesthetic and macabre scenarios emerge from within the depths of the play creating that the audience can enjoy like a glamorous and puzzling parade of pictures.

Ben J. Riepe:

Ben J. Riepe, who studied at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen and later worked with V.A. Wölfl and as a guest dancer in Pina Bausch’s Ensemble, founded his own ensemble in 2004. In March 2009 he was selected as one of four choreographers for the promotion of elites of North-Rhine-Westphalia. With his productions he is on a quest for critical and future-oriented art that transcends the viewer’s and his own artistic expectation with means that are beyond psychologisation, narration and the conventions of contemporary dance.

Ben J. Riepe and his troupe are in India to participate in the World Dance Alliance Annual Summit at New Delhi and will perform in Chennai and Hyderabad before taking the stage in Dhaka, during their South Asia tour.

For interviews with the troupe, please contact : 9243100911

and

India Foundation for the Arts

present

Arts Education: Contexts, Concepts, and Practices in Schools

Dec 11 – 12, 2009

The Chancery Pavilion, Bangalore

The Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore and India Foundation for the Arts(IFA) are jointly hosting an Arts Education Conference on December 11 – 12, 2009 at The Chancery Pavilion, Residency Road, Bangalore. This conference, perhaps the first of its kind in the country is an extension of Kali-Kalisu a project undertaken by IFA in partnership with the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan to empower the school teacher through arts pedagogy training workshops under one of IFA’s major funding programmes, Arts Education. This initiative brought multi-pronged Arts Education workshops to over 500 teachers in rural and small-town Karnataka covering Shimoga, Dharwad, Bidar, Gulbarga, Udipi, Coorg and Mandya districts.

This conference hopes to articulate frameworks and directions for Arts Education in the country and will involve a broad range of stakeholders, including policy makers, educationists, administrators, parents and students in the deliberations. Some of the key speakers and discussants of the conference include Prof. Shiv Visvanathan, Mr. Rohit Dhankar, Mr. Karthikeya V. Sarabhai, Mr. Dadi D. Pudumjee, Ms. Maya Krishna Rao, Mr. Sadanand Menon, Mr. Akshara KV, and Dr. Shekhar Seshadri.

The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a global reach. Known in India as the Max Mueller Bhavan, the Institut promotes knowledge of the German language abroad and fosters international cultural cooperation. Among other goals in the cultural arena, the Goethe-Institut lays major emphasis on executing and supporting projects that focus on capacity building and infrastructure.

India Foundation for the Arts is an independent, professionally-managed philanthropic organisation, based in Bangalore. IFA enriches the practice, knowledge, public access to, and experience of the arts in India, by providing strategic support for innovative projects and capacity building across the arts.

menaka@indiaifa.org or 080 23414681

Yesterday we went birding to Manchinabele Reservoir and several of us planned to go to Kommaghatta Lake this morning.

One of us did visit…and found that the lake had…disappeared.

Here’s part of her message:

“sorry for sending bad news your way so early, ….i reached the *erstwhile* kommaghatta lake and found no sign of it… I could hardly believe my eyes… the entire lake is GONE, disappeared, lake bed dredged up and big mounds lying all over the place. walked across the lake bed… i meant to walk the entire stretch but after a point didn’t have the heart to do it…. still can’t get over the anger and the shock….
no cheers,
-g”

The anguish we all feel speaks through those strong words. How DARE BBMP dry up our water bodies like this? Have they no sense? I read last week that BBMP does not want to plant any more trees in Bangalore because “the roots are shallow”. This may be true of the Rain trees and the Spathodeas (which are from Africa) …but what about planting banyan trees, neem trees or mango trees instead? Our old roads and highways had shelter for wayfarers, and sheltered wildlife and birds, and gave welcome shade even to motorized vehiccles.

What on earth is wrong with our present government that they are so extremely shortsighted>

Is there some way we can get the BBMP to account for the disappearance of Kommaghatta Lake?

I am told that Jakku Lake has been similarly drained. I am…truly anguished. Should I stand by and see my city being murdered and literally dried to death in this fashion? NOTHING will bring back the trees and the lakes once they are going. We can just have “Sampangi Tank Road” and “Miller Road Tank Bed” as road signs, that’s all.

click here

to see where Kommaghatta Lake is….was…situated.

With over a three million titles on display, 340 stalls from leading publishers and distributors, this 10 day long Bangalore Book Festival (BBF) is open to public from 9th Nov till 15th Nov ( i.e. today) is claimed to be indias largest book festival….

Open to public from 11am till 8pm.
More photos here..

Proceedings of the Sale goes to HCG Foundation.

Dr. Ajai Kumar & Mrs. Bhagya Ajaikumar
Swasti gallery & HCG Foundation
Contemporary Art Gallery,
HCG Towers, # 8, Kalinga Rao Road,
Sampangi Ram Nagar, Bangalore- 560 027.

Swasti gallery initiative of HCG Foundation
SWASTI brings together talented Indian artists and showcases their work. This contemporary art gallery housed at HCG headquarters in Bangalore displays paintings, sculptures and installations, round the year. The proceeds of the sale are shared with the artists and the needy cancer patients. The art gallery serves as an oasis of peace, hope, and tranquility for patients waiting anxiously in the hospital lobby, and lifts their spirits. Swasti’s goal is to spread public awareness and appreciate the role of Arts in the society. They aim at raising funds for the HCG foundation to help support the cancer patients.

Art Mantram
Art Mantram’s objective is to promote art, and encouraging up-and-coming artists by giving them a platform to exhibit their paintings”. Art Mantram’s projects include supporting education for underprivileged children, persons with disabilities and abandoned girl children, in Karnataka, Delhi and Arunachal Pradesh.

It was indeed heartening to see the enthusiastic lineup of children just before the play, and I was also impressed that Sankar’s Cafe at Ranga Shankara also has a Readng Corner for children now. Theatre and allied activities seem to be actively encouraged at Ranga Shankara and this is a great thing to see.

“Zapperdockel and the Wock” is the story of two very different creatures, Zapperdockels being small, and the Wock being a very large being. A Zapperdockel is also a crybaby.How these two interact and learn to get along is the story of the one-hour play.

Throughout the play, I was impressed by the reaction of the children in the audience (the play blurb says it’s for children “4 and above”.) A crowd of them were also invited on to the stage, and they were clearly enjoying themselves.

Virginia and Anil Kumar (I don’t know if I got the male name right, though) were the puppeteers who brough the puppets to life, and with innovative props, excecuted a variety of tricks and capers on stage that had the children constantly amused, and, occasionally, enthralled, as when they lit a flame under a plastic bag, and sent it soaring up into the air.

Walking sticks that acted as scales, hats that filled with flour, a box that opened this way and that…the props were very inventive and creative, and the rectangle described by the ropes onstage created a stage within a stage where all the action happened.

I thoroughly enjoyed the music, too; it was composed by Kumaresh of the famous violinist duo, Ganesh and Kumaresh, and sometimes consisted of purely Carnatic renditions, sometimes percussion passages, and sometimes a violin duet…it was a delight to the ear at all times.

The puppets, made by Anurupa Roy of Kat Katha, were also lovely to behold, with several Wocks taking the stage at one time, but mostly having a blue-coloured Wock iinteracting with a littleyelllow Zapperdockel.

However, I must say that perhaps I was too old for the narrative: I could not follow the thread of the story too well, and sometimes it seemed to drag. Some of the tricks on stage seemed to really have nothing at all to do with the play at all..though perhaps, with the age of the audience tragetted, no such connection was necessary. I never felt that I had got the message that Aru gave the children just prior to the show…that the play was to show how different people can get along together.

I would like to make the point, however, that young children need not always feel that magic-type tricks and slapstick comedy are the only things that comprise theatre for children; I think they are capable of appreciating more sophisticated storylines and stagecraft than what I witnessed at Ranga Shankara yesterday. Personally, I felt that the play could have been cut short to even 40 minutes, and could have done with a more predominant, sequential thread running through it. The two Sutradhars did not always seem to have a “sutra” to convey to the audience.

Ranga Shankara is putting up four more plays as part of the fifth anniversary celebrations, for more details, please visit

http://www.rangashankara.org/

All the plays have been staged before, but are being brought back by popular demand.

Show Details : October 24th , Saturday (4:30 PM & 7:30 PM)
Contact No’s : 9880036611 & 9845017975
Online Booking: www.indianstage.in

About the Play :

[sic] takes place primarily in the doorways and shared hallway of three neighbouring apartments. Meet Theo, the desperate & edgy
amusement park ride theme music composer, the struggling and ever-broke writer Babette, and Frank, the queer, happy-go-lucky
aspiring auctioneer. See them humorously trudge through the haunting morass of everyday drudgery and the biting emptiness of big city life. Watch, as the three of them come together to discuss, flirt, argue, share their dreams and plan their futures with unequal degrees of deep hopefulness and abject despair. [sic], chosen as one of the Best American Plays of 2002, is a neurotic, bittersweet comedy about the “quarter-life crisis”, and unfolds as three lives collide in one common corridor.

Also can’t believe that one of Bangalore’s most sought after shopping destinations can have its awkward sights. A garbage truck right in the middle of your frame, with a trail of big brand signs on either side of the road.

His work displayed ranging from the sketches he drew as a child to cartoons and drawings published in magazines to works exhibited at international exhibitions. A must see Bangaloreans….

More about Mario…

Date: 10:00 am – 11:00 am, Sunday, October 11, 2009

Venue: GKVK Main Gate on Bellary Road

Program: Protest against proposed 80 feet link road through GKVK campus

Issue
Proposed construction of a major 80 feet link road through GKVK campus entailing cutting of 3000 trees and destruction of several research plots

Current Status

GKVK has transferred the land to BBMP. BBMP has felled hundreds of trees and has initiated civil works. Court has issued stay order on further felling of trees. Forest department has filed a FIR and is investigating the issue. However, BBMP is still planning to carry on with road work. We have now lost hundreds of trees, but the land still remains. We can atleast regrow the trees and we can prevent a road from running through a green patch and destroying it. If we lose the land, we lose the battle fully and we’ll have a road running through an urban green patch, impacting the rest of the green patch negatively!

Why is it of concern?

q GKVK is a unique habitat with rich bio-diversity providing the much needed green space and shelter to several species of birds, insects, animals and many rare plants.

q Deforestation will potentially affect ambient temperature, rainfall, and the surrounding water table.

q Pollution resulting from the fuel emissions of subsequent traffic on the proposed link road would negatively impact the bio-diversity of the campus as also the health of the neighbourhood children and residents.

q The research character of the campus would be adversely affected with the advent the road, commuters, establishment of commercial enterprises, and generation of waste material alongside such a major link road through the campus.

Community Demand

q Environmental Impact Study (EIS) must be done in compliance of legal requirements for forest areas and a serious evaluation of alternatives must be undertaken in consultation with stakeholders and environmentalists before taking a decision.

Action taken so far

q Signature campaign for petition to Karnataka Governor

q Petition to BBMP on April 10th, 2009

q Save GKVK Candlelight Vigil on August 25, 2009

q Petition to the Karnataka Governor on August 28th, 2009

q Save GKVK March on September 5th, 2009

q Memorandum to the Karnataka Governor on September 5th, 2009

q Submission for intervention to the Director General of Forests, Ministry of Environment and Forests, New Delhi.

q Save GKVK Candlelight Vigil on October 2, 2009

Must SAVE this lung space – the GKVK campus – one of the last remaining green cover in North Bengaluru!

Contact: 95 35 10 30 50 Email: SaveGKVKadmin@gmail.com