Cultural events are making a slow comeback in the city. The two-day Feet on Earth Festival, curated and organised by Kuchipudi dancer Pujita Krishna brought together dancers of varied forms at the Salarjung Museum auditorium. Talking about dance festival, she says, “It is the name of my dance company, I ran a studio for 10 years and now we do not have a physical space but we organise festivals.
This is my first festival and the idea is to bring performing art form together and honour and celebrate the art, cultural heritage, ecology and history. I am into all of these and for me this kind of a space or an initiative that brings together these elements in a aesthetic and meaningful way so that people can engage in it and there is some kind of take away at the end of the event. The idea is to do this annually and give opportunities to younger promising artists who are making a name for themselves. This is a festival that includes performing arts of all kinds and not only classical ones.”
Elaborating about how she fell in love with dancing, “When I was growing up there was no social media platform to see talents. It was only Doordarshan channel where we could saw celebrities performing. Another inspiration was my mother who was a artist and it was she who used to motivate us to join classical dance class. My father was in the Indian Airforce so where ever we were posted my mother would hunt down dance places and send us there.
That is how it started and whenever we were in the city we used to watch dance in the auditorium at Ravindra Bharathi.” Further adding, “For most dancers, watching a live performance always leaves a strong impression as it is a powerful thing which happens on stage. There are so many expression and feelings coming together and presented as a story to the audience is very powerful.
My first impression was a contemporary dance form by Paul Tailor’s company in the 90s and many such performances left quite an impression on me in terms of what dancing can do.” Moving on forward with her concept and training youngsters she says, “For me as an individual, I did run a space for artists and it was shut after Covid-19. I would want to engage people in dance and research of dancing areas which have not been looked into often.
There is a tremendous amount of material coming out from the west on Indian culture and heritage, but sadly we do not have Indian researchers who are doing anything about it so that is an area of my focus. I would like to do new work and put it out at public forum. There is a lot of scope for youngsters because of social media and putting out work through the medium.”