Indian Embassy, NCCAL organize cultural evening
KUWAIT CITY, May 2: The Embassy of India in collaboration with the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCCAL) is organizing a cultural evening for two days on May 4 and 5, 2015, at 7:00 pm at the Keifan Theatre (opposite the Keifan Cooperative Society) and Indian Embassy Auditorium respectively.
Performing in the event will be the Punjabi Lok Rang Cultural Youth Club, Ludhiana, Punjab. The dance troupe is led by Sandeep Kumar who will present the bhangra dance.
Bhangra was first reportedly performed on stage in India in 1954 which later developed and attained a rather standardized form by the 1980s, the folkloric bhangra which was exported to other countries by Punjabi emigrants.
Kumar has been regularly participating in bhangra youth festivals and folk dance programs which are organized by North Zone Cultural Center, West Zone Cultural Center, South Zone Cultural Center and Indian Council For Cultural Relations. He has also participated in national youth festival & games, Republic Day & Independence Day celebrations at Ludhiana.
Fusion
By the 1990s, a still newer style bhangra dance was staged in the Punjabi Diaspora, often characterized by a fusion with Western dance styles and the use of prerecorded audio mixes.
The stage presentation of bhangra incorporates traditional folk moves and includes sequences from other Punjabi dances, namely, Luddi, Jhummar, Dhamaal, and Gham Luddi.
Bhangra was performed as a seasonal dance in the month leading up to the festival of Vaisakhi, the month of harvest, especially wheat crop.
It is based on music from a dhol, folk singing, and the chimta. The accompanying songs are small couplets written in the Punjabi language called bolis.
Bhangra singers use a high, energetic tone of voice accompanied by fierce singing adding nonsensical, random noises to their singing with the dancers yelling phrases such as hoi, hoi, hoi; balle balle; chak de and so on.
Dedicated
In ancient India according to Hindu beliefs, dance is believed to have been conceived by Brahma. Since there were no dedicated auditorium halls or theaters, dance was usually performed as a functional activity dedicated to worship, entertainment or leisure.
The dancers usually performed in temples, on festive occasions and seasonal harvests on a regular basis before deities as a form of worship. The tradition has carried on in modern India where deities are invoked through religious folk dance forms from ancient times.
India offers a number of classical Indian dance forms, each of which can be traced to different parts of the country.
Classical and folk dance forms have also emerged from Indian traditions, epics and mythology. The presentation of Indian dance styles in Hindi cinema has exposed the range of dance in India to a global audience.