Waves of interest at Lahrein event

A combination of themes presented through song, dance and drama resulted in a multi-faceted evening of showbiz

Kalavishkar presented their second artistic venture Lahrein recently at the Chandler Community Theatre in Keysborough. Mandar Vaidya and Reshma Parulekar founded the Kalavishkar Innovative Art Academy on September 1, 2012 to provide an opportunity to learn theatre, dance and music. At the end of the workshops, participants are encouraged to present their acquired skills in front of an audience. According to Mandar Vaidya, Kalavishkar does not restrict itself by any linguistic barriers, or by any particular form of Indian dance. People from all multicultural backgrounds are encouraged to express their interest and learn Indian dances and dramatics.

The recent Lahrein event had six performances in total, each judged by a panel that comprised of Mrs Shubhada Gokhale, Mrs Shilpa Gaikwad and Mrs Rashmi Padwal.

Kalavishkar presented its first welcome dance in Sanskrit. The song accompanying the dance was scripted by Pandit Narendra Sharma, a renowned poet of the Hindi language and was performed during the 1982 Asian Games to welcome the international sports community to India. Reshma Parulekar, co-founder of Kalavishkar, choreographed the dance number set to this song. Sanjana Athavale was awarded the outstanding performer’s award by the judges.

Next, Kalavishkar drama kid’s zone students presented a fun filled drama with a moral called Gharonda (The Nest). Written by the late Vijay Tendulkar, this drama was translated in English and was directed by Kalavishkar’s co-founder, Mandar Vaidya.

Gharonda is a story of a colony of sparrows, a tale of great ambitions and a message of humanity, compassion and contentment. The kids did an excellent job and ticked all the boxes of voice projection, reactions, movements and voice modulation on stage. Subah Arora who played the role of the storyteller sparrow Pankhud won the outstanding performer award.

The children’s play was followed by a Holi dance choreographed by Reshma Parulekar. Mrs Vandana Kumar carried away the outstanding performer award with some excellent dancing.

Next on the program was an entertaining mimicry performance by a Kalavishkar family stalwart, Vivek Pande. He presented mimicry items of famous Bollywood artists like Amrish Puri, Raj Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Dev Anand and Ashok Kumar. Vivek received tremendous applause for his talent.

The next item was a celebration of harvest in the form of bhangra dancing, depicting the vivaciousness of rural Punjab. Mrs Harsiddhi Modi was chosen as the most outstanding performer for this item.

A half an hour of intermission followed, in which the audience enjoyed tasty snacks of batata wadas and gulab jamuns.

The finale of the evening was a hilarious Hindi play called Sandese, originally written by the late Sudhir Kavdi and translated by Rajesh Bibikar. The play was directed by Mandar Vaidyam, with music support by Sameer Manduskar and lights support by Aniket Parulekar and Prashant Jadhav.

Sandese was a story about chain letters that hit a town and start to multiply. The play showed how the letter impacted people from different walks of life such as employees in an office, a spinster, a senior couple, a teacher and her husband. Finally, it turns out that a film producer and his friend who wished to promote their upcoming film were generating the letters. All the characters did justice to their roles. Manju Saini was conferred the most outstanding performer award for her acting. The play was well directed and all aspects of acting, sets, lights and music displayed good teamwork.

Poulomi Deshpande as the Master of Ceremonies for the evening conducted the show with aplomb. Poulomi was also the sutradhaar (storyteller) in the Hindi play.

Overall it was a very entertaining event. The packed audience enjoyed it and applauded wholeheartedly at every item that was presented.