SUTRA AT KONARK DANCE FESTIVAL – 3rd December 2017

Dear Friends,

As you can see, Sutra is prominently featured in this year’s branding of Konark Dance Festival by Odisha Tourism.

This is a great honour that sends our morale sky-rocketing to do well in this Festival. Sutra will perform

GANJAM (Odissi), on the 3 December (third day) as a tribute to the late Dr Dinanath Pathy, under the baton of Guru Gajendra Kumar Panda who will conduct the live music. The music, one of most interesting commissioned by Sutra, was created by none other than Pandit Gopal Panda, with nuanced reference to many of Ganjam’s vibrant folk music and theatre traditions. With a total of more than 24 dancers, complete with technical team under Sutra’s lighting wonder-boy and technical director, Sivarajah Natarajan, Sutra’s contingent and entourage include friends, parents, journos and those who have followed us through our journey, all these years. We are pleased that YBhg Datuk Mazlan Othman, Malaysia’s astrophysicist, will be part of this cultural emissary that reaffirms the cultural connectivity of Kalinga-Sutra-Malaysia which had its history since hoary times. Apart from the Dance and Temple hopping, due to the influence of our Odiyan Touring Director, Dr Debabrata, our emphasis is on Cuisine – especially pucca traditional Odiya Cuisine…

Not surprising, our touring package has reached its maximum. More than these, would spell pandemonia, chaos followed by disaster. So, we had to say ‘no’ to quite a few unfortunate one who were a bit late in expressing their interest to follow us.

I am delighted that Odisha Tourism is realising the potential of attracting tourism from Malaysia through the Konark Dance Festival. The Festival acts as a focal point for the meeting of business and pleasure especially when the weather is going to be just right! 

Besides Sutra, the Temple of Fine Arts under the artistic direction of bharatanatyam guru, Shankar Kandasamy has the honour of performing on the first day of the Festival with a bharatanatyam performance, themed on Lord Rama. 

But before we embark to Odisha, we have two major events in KL to finish off a scintillating 2017 – that is the much anticipated illustrated talk by Dr Sunil Kothari on the legendary dancer Ram Gopal at ICC, Brickfields and then a most interesting and comprehensive exhibition ever mounted in Malaysia -The Blue Mountain – featuring Contemporary Visual Art of Odisha –  a fitting tribute to Sutra’s major collaborator, the late Dr Dinanath Pathy, who is also the Father of contemporary art of Odisha. Those who cannot be with us to Konark – at least be with us at Sutra to celebrate this exhibition!