43 artists to receive Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards on Wednesday

The Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards for 2016 will be given away to 43 eminent musicians, dancers, and theatre artists at Rashtrapati Bhavan by President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday.

Artists who will receive the Akademi's Awards this year in the field of music are Padma Talwalkar and Prabhakar Karekar for Hindustani vocal music, Kala Ramnath for violin, Arvind Mulgaonkar for tabla, and Neela Ramgopal and K. Omanakutty for Carnatic vocal music.

Other recipients include J Vaidhyanathan and Mysore M Manjunath for Carnatic instrumental music - in mridangam and violin respectively, Ningthoujam Shyamchand Singh for nata sankirtana - a traditional music of Manipur, Ratnamala Prakash and Ahmed Hussain and M. Hussain for sugam sangeet.

In the field of dance, nine eminent artists will be honoured - Geeta Chandran for Bharatanatyam, Jitendra Maharaj for Kathak, Kalamandalam Ramachandran Unnithan for Kathakali, Maisnam Kaminikumar Singh for Manipuri, A.B Bala Kondala Rao for Kuchipudi, Ratikant Mohapatra for Odissi, Haricharan Bhuyan Borbayan for Sattriya, Gopal Prasad Dubey for Chhau and Anita R Ratnam for contemporary dance.

For theatre, nine eminent artists who will be conferred the award are Kusum Kumar for playwriting, Bipin Kumar, Satyabrata Rout and Rajkamal Nayak for direction, Gireesan V. Oinam Biramangol Singh and Mohan Joshi for acting, Anjana Puri for composing music for theatre, K Govind Bhat for yakshgana and Govind Bhat for major traditions of theatre.

Artists who will receive the award in the field of traditional folk, tribal music, dance, theatre and puppetry are Annabattula Lakshmi Mangatayaru and Leela Sai (Joint Award) for Kalavantulu (traditional theatre of Andhra Pradesh), Yogesh Gadhavi and Vidyanand Saraik for folk music of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh respectively.

Somnath D Chari for traditional music of Goa, Laxmidhar Raut from Odisha for Pala, Chiranji Lal Tanwar of Rajasthan for Mand, Gulzar Ahmad Ganie from Jammu and Kashmir for Chakri (folk music),Braj Kishor Dubey for Bihari folk music and Prabhitangsu Das and Shri Dattatreya Aralikatte for puppetry will also be conferred the award.

Pappu Venugopal Rao and Avinash Pasricha received the Akademi's Award for their overall contribution in the performing arts.

This year, four eminent artists and scholars in the performing arts who will be conferred Fellowships of the Akademi.

The Akademi Ratna (Fellowships) this year will be conferred on Arvind Parikh, R. Vedavalli, Ram Gopal Bajaj and Sunil Kothari.

--IANS

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