Bharatanatyam By Geeta Chandran & Hindustani Vocal By Parveen Sultana: Events in Hyderabad

REVIEW FOR BHARATANATYAM BY GEETA CHANDRAN...

Natya Tarangini, Raja & Radha Reddy's Institute Of Kuchipudi Dance, is back with the 2008 edition of Parampara - National Festival Of Music And Dance, from the 3rd to the 4th of October 2008, at Ravindra Bharathi. Natya Tarangini has been annually organizing the national music and dance festivals titled Parampara for the last 10 years in Delhi. Last year (2007), Natya Tarangini organized the series titled 'Andhri', for the first time in the city of Hyderabad from 31st August to 2nd September 2007 at Ravindra Bharathi and was inaugurated by the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.

This year's festival is being inaugurated by Shri Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Minister for Major Irrigation, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

On 4th October, the second day of the festival, there will be a Bharatanatyam performance by Geeta Chandran and a Hindustani vocal performance by Parveen Sultana.

Geeta Chandran

Geeta Chandran was initiated in the art by Swarna Saraswathy. Subsequently she was trained by V.Sadasivam and Guru K.N.Dakshinamoorthy. She also studied abhinaya with Jamuna Krishnan and Kalanidhi Narayanan and is presently working with V.Krishnamoorthy.

Since her arangetram in 1974, Geeta Chandran has been performing regularly and has grown into a mature performer with a distinctly creative mind. Blending tradition and innovation, she has experimented with issues and concerns of contemporary relevance in her dance.

Geeta Chandran is recognised not only for her deep and composite understanding of the art of Bharatanatyam, but also for her accomplishment as a Carnatic music vocalist, her work in television, video and film, theatre, choreography, dance-education and dance-issue journalism. Geeta has recently authored So Many Journeys, an intensely personal collection of her writings narrating her engagement with classical dance.

Geeta Chandran has performed in various parts of the country and abroad. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the Department of Culture, government of India for research in vachikabhinaya. In 2007, she was awarded the Padma Shri. She is currently teaching Bharatanatyam at Natya-vriksha, the institution she has founded in Delhi.

Parveen Sultana

Sultana ranks today as one of the foremost classical vocalists in India. A child prodigy, she was the youngest artist to receive the Padmasri award, in 1972, from the Government of India. She received her early training from her father Ikramul Majid and her grandfather Mohammed Najeef Khan. Both were ardent music lovers, and their nurturing of her talent at an early age enabled her to give her first recital at a tender age of 12.

From then on, there has been no looking back. Her father put her under the guidance of renowned maestro Acharya Chinmoy Lahiri of Calcutta. Sultana subsequently found a guru who laid a much deeper foundation that gave a new dimension to her singing, giving it the required mastery of ragas and voice culture that would expand her range to three and a half octaves - Ustad Dilshad Khan, her guru and husband.

Parveen Sultana was trained in the Patiala Gharana (school of music), but with Ustadji