"Ankur" and then some

Continuing from where I left off in my last post, our work with Shaw Public School culminated in an hour-long performance on the 9th and 10th of April. There were six of us from Kolkata Sanved who choreographed and stitched together the performance. The Kolkata-based band, Friends of Fusion, handled the music; they selected and trained the choir and performed the songs and instrumental pieces live. This was another exciting feature of the process: developing the music and movement for the performance. It was a wonderfully collaborative venture with both the music and the movements influencing and shaping each other. The underlying theme of the performance (which we named Ankur: Rebirth) was the need for environmental conservation and human sensitivity to other forms of life. We set Ankur in the Himalayas and the animals and birds we showcased (all brilliantly enacted by the Nursery and Kindergarten children!) comprised highly endangered species.The songs which were performed included Satyajit Ray's Aha ki ananda, Rabindranath Tagore's Akash bhara surya-tara and Sting's Fragile. Poems like Emily Dickenson's Hope, an original piece by the school's Hindi teacher and a couple of verses by Tagore were weaved into the presentation. The fact that this was an open-air production heightened its effect and, I think, enhanced what we were trying to convey through it. I'll try and get some photos of the performance to put up here.The girls were incredibly enthusiastic and hardworking and I am looking forward to working with them more when the new session of the school begins.

After the Shaw Public School performance came to an end, it's been back to office work: report writing, grant applications and the like. I did, however, conduct a class with the girls in Apne Aap on faith and spirituality. I asked them to enact individually (and then in groups) what faith meant to them. Once again, I was struck by their astute observations and clarity of thought regarding concerns like religious fundamentalism.

My internship with Choice is drawing to a close, a thought that saddens me a bit because I'm not a big fan of (good) things coming to an end. There are times when I think the past year just zipped by, while at other times, I feel like I've grown a lot in this field during these twelve months. But these thoughts call for a separate post, which I shall write soon enough :-).