Bengaluru event to provide a platform for classical dancers from trans community
This year’s festival, themed ‘Expression Beyond Gender’, aims to celebrate the talent and creativity of transgender classical dancers
The International Arts and Cultural Foundation has announced the 5th edition of the Transgender Arts Festival, an event dedicated to promoting classical arts and providing an exclusive platform for transgender classical dancers.
This year’s festival, themed “Expression Beyond Gender,” aims to celebrate the talent and creativity of transgender classical dancers.
The festival is the brainchild of Srivatsa Shandilya, the founder director of the International Arts and Cultural Foundation.
Fostering inclusivity
Srivatsa has been a photographer in the media industry for over 35 years and started this organisation 12 years back to promote classical arts among the transgender community.
In 2015, he was the first to organise the Transgender Arts Festival.
“The festival is motivated by my desire to foster inclusivity and to showcase the diverse expressions of artistry among the trans community,” said Srivasta.
“I always wanted to organise something different from the usual routine of an evening of classical dance. I ended up thinking of focused events and started this exclusive transgender classical dance festival to make it stand out from traditional performing arts festivals by deliberately breaking away from the norm,” he further added.
Srivasta says that his experiment has resulted in the government recognising transgender dancers. “It was an eye opener when people from the ministry started asking the database of transgender classical dances across India,” he says.
Diverse backgrounds
The event will feature Classical dance performances by Vaishnavi, Selvi Santhosam, Rekha, Rose, Omana, and Karthi. All of them are disciples of Shanmuga Sundaram, artistic director of Sarasalaya, a classical dance performance center in Chennai. “This year we have six transgenders from Chennai, some of them are students while some are working professionals. From IT to HR professionals, more and more people from diverse backgrounds have participated this year,” said Srivasta. After the performances, the artists will engage with the audience, sharing their inspiring stories of resilience and dedication.
The chief guest for the event will be Anu Prabhakar Mukherjee, a noted awardwinning Kannada film actor, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, a wellknown classical dancer and Indian film actor, and dancer Sathyanarayana Raju.
The event is open to the public with free entry on a firstcome, firstserved basis. Seating is limited to 200 seats. The event is scheduled to be held on March 31, at Sevasadan Auditorium, 14th Cross Malleshwaram, from 5 p.m. onwards.