The Child Welfare Committee in association with Veer Foundation for Art and Culture organised a Bharatanatyam workshop for destitute children of Udavum Karangal.
As soon as the guests — Chief Secretary Manoj Parida, his wife Lipi Parida and Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Chairperson Vidyaa Ramkumar — arrived at the Veer Foundation for Art and Culture, Bharatanatyam artiste and founder-director of Veer Foundation Krithiga Ravichandran initiated the workshop on story telling through her performance.
“I will perform a dance for a story narrated in English. After watching the performance, any one of you should come forward and explain the story,” she told the girls eagerly waiting to watch the performance.
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A girl from the audience stood up after the performance and explained the story to others.
Eight-year-old Priyanka was one among the 25 girls participating in the workshop. “I am here to learn dance, but I do not know what they would be teaching us today,” she said.
Saranya, who was sitting beside her, said she performs dance on different occasions in her school.
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“I love to dance and that is the reason they have brought me here,” she said.
Ms. Ramkumar said: “We wanted to organise a summer camp for the children of childcare institutions. As many of them had left for their native places, we decided to organise a dance workshop.”
Teaching the basics
Explaining about the workshop, Ms. Ravichandran said that they would be teaching basic dance movements, body control, gestures and nuances of choreography and dance techniques in the one-day workshop.
“The aim of this workshop is to identify the children who have inherent passion to dance. After selecting the girls from among the 25, we will provide full-fledged training in Bharatanatyam,” she said.