The NCPA (National Centre for the Performing Arts) in Mumbai has been actively working with school children for over a decade. Since 2013, it has been regularly conducting dance outreach sessions (NCPA Vistaar) in schools across Mumbai where visiting artistes as well as city-based artistes interact with school children. These sessions are aimed at giving the children exposure to Indian classical and folk dances. The session is typically a 60 minute one where artistes demonstrate different dance forms and also talk about it. However, this initiative faced a setback as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world severely. But, the NCPA keep the show going and took the sessions online.
Speaking to the Free Press Journal, Swapnokalpa Dasgupta, Head of Dance, NCPA, said that the outreach sessions were modified during the pandemic to an online lecture-demonstration series where schools in Mumbai as well as outside Mumbai were given an opportunity to be a part of the programme. "We have conducted engaging sessions for children from Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Pune and of course Mumbai as well with artistes from Delhi, Orissa, Manipur, Tamil Nadu and more," she added. Dasgupta said the online medium has helped them to reach much beyond what they normally could. "Till now we have done close to 25 sessions of reaching out to children across India," she added.
Piyush Chauhan conducted Kathak workshop supported by Godrej Agrovet |
nkur Ballal & Rohan Dahale's lecture demonstration |
However, there are also a lot of difficulties associated with the online medium as not all children come from well-to-do families. When asked about this, Dasgupta said, "A lot of the sessions have an influx of participants and most of these children come from very humble backgrounds. We are part of a privileged society who are able to afford the data charges required for a Zoom call but most of these kids are not. Hence, we let children join our sessions with their video turned off in order to get a better internet speed. There are some children who have access to their device only at night after their parents are back home from work. In this case, we also have all our sessions are telecasted live so that anyone who is interested can access. Our NCPA YouTube channel keeps each video live for seven days after which it is added to our NCPA archive. While there are some sessions where only 10 kids are in the Zoom call but there might be many of them watching it live."
Dasgupta said getting the artistes on board wasn't a brain-racking task as the "artiste community realises that their future lies with these young minds, and they are always ready to share their knowledge with them". "It only took a phone call to get the artistes who had joined our mission to come on board. We had many senior artistes who were a part of the series along with quite a few talented junior artistes as well," she added.
Dheerendra Tiwari performing the Panchakshara |
Nilava Sen performing the Panchakshara Stotra |
She said the NCPA Vistaar collaborated with dancers of different dance forms from all over India. "Our aim is to build exposure towards the different dance forms, and also depicting the varied and rich cultural heritage of our natio," she added. The virtual workshops were conducted across cities like Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Assam and Mumbai and were hosted by several established artistes like Uma Satyanarayan, Bhumeshwar Singh, Kavita Dwivedi, Dheerendra Tiwari, Anwesha Mahanta, Gauri Diwakar, Vishal Krishna, etc.
NCPA Vistaar is currently funded till March 2022 by personal donations and corporate support, said Dasgupta. "If we continue to be funded, then we aspire to keep reaching out to every corner of the country through this programme," she added.
