Gurgaon's tryst with culture

From dastans to musical acts - it's a packed weekend for residents of Millenium City

Gurgaon's Biodiversity Park is usually filled with a regular stream of joggers and walkers - a haven in a city that is otherwise a large urban sprawl. Of late, however, the park's amphitheatre is increasingly being viewed as an attractive venue for music, dance and theatre performances alongwith the suburb's art and culture hub, Epicentre. The park has a slight edge with its outdoor amphitheatre, surrounded by greenery - something quite rare in Millenium City.

In 2013, the Gurgaon Utsav held at the same venue had brought Malini Awasthi's folk music, a theatre performance - Piya Behrupiya - and some Punjabi folk music accompanied by electronic music. Organisations like the Arts and Literature foundation and I Am Gurgaon have taken the lead to bring culture to Delhi's largest suburb.

Friday evening, the amphitheatre at the park came alive once again with another edition of Gurgaon Utsav - the large rock face of the arena subtly lit to provide a dramatic backdrop to a Sufi Kathak performance by Manjari Chaturvedi. This was part of a three-day cultural festival presented by the Arts and Literature foundation in association with Haryana's department of cultural affairs. The festival is being been supported by the municipal corporation of Gurgaon.

Chaturvedi - who claims to have pioneered 'Sufi Kathak' and is in fact it's only exponent - performed before a surprisingly large audience, which braved the chill of a November evening, at the park which is usually a few degrees below the average Gurgaon temperature. Although the show has been put together and choreographed by Chaturvedi, it was her accompanists - Ameen Khan and his party of five (the Manganiyars from Rajasthan), and Adil Hussain Khan and his group of qawwals from Hyderabad that held the audience's attention with their powerful music, which had touches of sufi and classical - beautifully rendered, rhythmic and melodious. Ameen Khan's group also kept the crowd captivated with its versatile traditional instruments from Rajasthan: the khartal and the morchang, now beginning to sound familiar to Delhi audiences.

Chaturvedi's dance was less than mesmerising. She was often twirling and spinning in a haze of smoke (artificially created to add to the drama on stage) and in fact may not have been missed had she spun off the stage. Her movements lacked the vigour and conviction that traditional Kathak offers, her expressions left you largely unmoved. You could at best say that the dance had perhaps some elements of Turkey's whirling dervishes and it was hard to tell what elements of Kathak her movements represented.

Nonetheless, the music stole the attention of the crowd with familiar and popular pieces like Chaap Tilak and Dama Dam Mast Kalandar that had the audience tapping its feet in consonance.

The festival continues on Saturday with a Dastangoi performance by Mahmood Farooqui, who has revived the ancient art of story telling almost singe handedly in India. The event is likely to be a big draw as the duo of Farooqui and Danish Husain will be performing the traditional Dastaan-e-Mehtaab and a part of Mantoiyat - the story of the writer Saadat Hasan Manto.

Although Dastangoi is the art of telling tales in Urdu, Farooqui has managed to make it understandable and enjoyable to a large and growing audience both in India and overseas since he revived it in 2005. Performances have been held at festivals in the United States and Pakistan. Despite being largely in Urdu - a language unfamiliar to most - Dastangoi has managed to gather fans across milieus.

Sunday - the third day of the festival - will see Susmit Sen (he lives and works in Gurgaon) present some songs from his newly released album Ocean to Ocean. This is his second album - the first, Depths of the Ocean, released in 2011.

Oceans seem to be a constant theme for Sen, who was formerly guitarist and lead singer for the well known Indian fusion band, Indian Ocean. He is now touring with a new setup of artistes called the Susmit Sen Chronicles.