Sangeet Natak Akademi joins 'Swachh Bharat' with puppetry, theatre, dance, music

The classical and folk artistes joined scholars and Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA) employees in a cleaning drive, as the country's apex performing-arts institution joined the nation-wide 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' with a cultural evening that vowed for a garbage-free India.

Holding brooms in their hands, veteran Odissi, Bharatanatyam and Kathak dancers teamed up with musicians, puppeteers and street-theatre artistes besides litterateurs and Sangeet Natak Akademi staffers across ranks, sweeping aside dust and dry leaves on the dais of the Akademi's open-air Meghdoot gallery on Thursday evening.

The function, 'Puppets to Pull Strings for Clean India', at Sangeet Natak Akademi's Rabindra Bhavan complex also saw the crowd taking pledge to keep one's locality clean.

Sangeet Natak Akademi Secretary Helen Acharya read out the oath laden with Gandhian spirit, before the stage was set for an instrumental concert, vocal recital, puppetry, poetry-reading, one-man skit, classical dance and street play.

Earlier, the traditional lamp on the stage was lit by dancers Ranjana Gauhar (Odissi) and Pratibha Prahlad (Bharatanatyam) besides scholar-critic Leela Venkataraman along with Acharya and her Sangeet Natak Akademi colleagues Santosh Kumari and Bijendra Singh. Close to a dozen Karamcharis were felicitated.

Rohit Anand gave a Hindustani flute recital which began with a piece in raag Hansadhwani, accompanied by Manmohan Nayak (pakhawaj) and Mustafa Hussain (tabla).

Pravin Kumar Shukla rendered a self-tuned song, penned by Subha Saxena, with support from a tabla and synthesizer.

Lucknow-based Deepa Puppet Sansthan presented a puppetry show that exhorted better use of toilets. Sangeet Natak Akademi's Prakash Tata Anand recited three poems she wrote.

A one-man play by Kala Mandali of Gandhi Hindustani was followed by Asavari Pawar's Kathak. The finale came as a street theatre by eight artistes - a drummer and seven actors (two of them females). The audience cheered their production which emphasized on community cleaning, while sarcastically looking at the ways society passed the blame on unclean environs.

Across the country too, the Sangeet Natak Akademi held theatre and puppetry evenings on October 2 in places such as Imphal, Kolkata, Agartala, Amritsar (Punjab), Umaria, Sidhi (both Madhya Pradesh), Allahabad, Karnal, Azamgarh, Mumbai, Bilaspur, Bhagalpur, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Dharwad, Ahmedabad, Mukteshwar, Lucknow, Guwahati, Dharmavaram (Andhra Pradesh), Bodoland Territorial Area Districts and Nalbari (both Assam) besides Jaipur.