A three-day extravaganza of traditional, classical, folk dance and music, Alva’s Virasat, will kick start at Moodbidri on Friday featuring more than 600 artistes.
Organised by Alva’s Education Foundation, this year’s virasat would showcase Sri Lankan dances, among others, on Saturday and Sunday.
Addressing media persons here on Monday, M. Mohan Alva, chairman, Alva’s Education Foundation, said that arrangements have been made for 40,000 people in the audience to enjoy the programmes at a time at Puttige near the Vidyagiri campus. About 80 to 100 artistes could perform at a time on the open air stage which is 150 ft long and 60 ft wide, he said.
The first day’s programme at 7 p.m. would begin with a bansuri-flute jugalbandi featuring Praveen Godkhindi on the bansuri and Shashank Subrahmanyam on the flute. They would be accompanied on the tabla by Shubashankar Bannerjee and on the mrudangam by Bhaktavatsalam.
It would be followed by the Gotipua dance from Odisha, a neo Kathak dance, hudo rass dance (shepherd) from Gujarat, Yakshagana dance of the Bagaduthittu school, and the Arbanamattu dance from Kerala by Muslim student artistes.
In all, 214 artistes would participate in all these dances.
The Alva’s Virasat Award would presented to V.P. Dhananjayan, Bharatanatyam dancer, on the inaugural day.
The second day’s programme would start with Nada Madhurya at 6 p.m. It would be a mixture of sitar, mandolin, drums, keyboards, base guitar and tabla recitals.
It would be followed by a Gotipua Nritya Roopaka by 55 artistes of the Aradhana Dance Academy from Bhubaneswar. Later, there would be Malla Kambha, a Kathak dance, Dhol Cholom dance from Manipur and Sri Lankan dance in which 60 artistes would participate.
The last day’s programme would begin with a musical nite by Shaan and Payal Dev from Mumbai. Later, the audience can witness Bharatanatyam, stick dance of Manipur and folk dance of Sri Lanka.
Alva’s Varna Virasat Award would be presented to Reva Shankar Sharma, an artist from Rajasthan on that day.
