Looking on the brighter side
Sohini Roy Chowdhury chooses to look through the lens of optimism and embraces the online world to spread her ethos of ‘connecting civilisations’ through dance
Sohini Roy Chowdhury, multi-award winning Bharatanatyam dancer, founder of ‘Sohinimoksha - World Dance and Communication’ and ‘Sohinimoksha - Artes de la India’, choreographer, producer and professor of ‘Natyashastra’ seamlessly started to migrate to the new-normal world of online performances and talks during COVID-19 lockdown in India.
Months of April and June usually find Sohini touring Austria, Italy, Germany and Spain for her annual UNESCO partnered performances, dance classes and lectures at various universities, schools and stages. But in 2020, she had to forgo this yearly inevitability, as well as mega-performances with her multinational ‘World Dance troupe’ ‘Sohinimoksha’. She instead decided to embrace the online world to spread her ethos of ‘connecting civilisations’ through her dance, her worldview and her time-traversing philosophy.
Sohini’s newly formed ‘Dayawanti Foundation’, set up to bring the world of music and dance closer to audiences old and new, whilst providing a platform and a channel to raise funds and social awareness for the betterment of the world’s deprived and displaced, became a natural umbrella for online endeavours.
From April to June, Sohini’s forays into the virtual world of ‘FB Live’ and ‘Zoom’ platforms took her from New York to London to Madrid via Delhi and Kolkata. This series of performances and talks kicked off with an online ‘FB Live session’ of Sohini’s definitive ‘Storytelling through Dance’ for children, hosted by Kolkata’s iconic ‘Oxford Bookstores’, one of her regular collaborators.
To celebrate World Dance Day 2020, Sohini was jointly invited by ‘Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan’, New York and the ‘Consulate of India’, New York, to present a virtual dance performance on ‘FB Live’. A mammoth logistical exercise, cutting across geographies and time-zones, globally ‘locked-in’ ladies and gentlemen from the world of ‘Sohinimoksha’ sent in video clips of their dancing to Sohini’s thematic choreography, and a common music track – all from their respective homes in Spain, USA, France and India.
Over the years, Sohini has been dedicating a significant chunk of her time and her craft, in the aid of the displaced and the marginalised, across India and the world. Not allowing this unprecedented health crisis to impede these efforts, Sohini moved this aspect of her activities to the virtual world as well. Sohini’s monthly face to face dance-lesson engagements with the women inmates, along with their children of Mumbai’s jails moved to the virtual world. She continues her classes, now weekly, with these very enthusiastic students through ‘Skype’, breaking through the inherent logistical challenges.