Film Club                                                                february 07 programmes

Gharanas are families of musicians including disciples singing in a style that marks them as different from other gharanas. These differences could relate to the raga repertoire or the manner of voice production or the role and importance accorded to specific bandishes. Delhi’s musical lineage stretches back many centuries due to the artistic patronage of its glittering courts, giving the city a rich gharana tradition.

The ‘Dilli gharana’ displays two simultaneous streams of musical focus – the ‘sufiana’ and the ‘darbari’. Iqbal Ahmad Khan, the current ‘khalifa’ of the gharana traces his ancestry to the court of Sultan Altamash of the 13th century. He also traces his musical ancestry through Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti who adapted the local musical style of ‘kirtan’ singing to create a new form - the ‘qawwali’. At the time of Miya Achpal the styles of the ‘qawwal’ singers merged with the older traditions of dhrupad creating the typical ‘gayaki’ of this gharana.

Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan dips into this rich tradition of ‘qaul’, ‘dhamaal’ and also ‘raga sagar’ and ‘tala sagar’ (forms noted for their technical virtuosity) and also presents a small taste of the ‘Dilli’ tradition practically unknown today – ‘naqsh–o – gul , hawa, basit, savela’.

Vidya Rao who introduces the music of Delhi gharana is not only a well known thumri singer but also a scholar who has researched and written extensively on music. For many years, she was the disciple of Naina Devi and is currently receiving advanced training under Shanti Hiranand and Girija Devi. Her training in khayal gayaki has been under Prof. B.N. Datta and Pandit Mani Prasad. She has composed and sung for the theatre and films and has been visiting professor at JNU’s School of Arts and Aesthetics and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies, Jadavpur University.

• asana (yoga postures)
• Pranayama (breathing exercises and energy-control techniques)
• Classical yoga meditation techniques
• energization exercises

Dance is the language of movement and as such has links with other languages, flamenco for example. The circular movements, the syncopated rhythms and the similarity between the castanets and the ‘khadtal’ testify to this connection. The young French dancer Isabelle Anna explores in her performance this evening, not only the language of the traditional kathak of the Lucknow Gharana, that she has learnt in India but in her creative interpretations of this style in the Bulerias of Flamenco, the music of the Italian renaissance, the Turkish flute and Persian percussion. She will also explore and relate the rich religious and sacred repertoire of Kathak with the sacred in Latin and Gregorian Christian chants.

The performance will be followed by a discussion with Isabelle, Guru Jai Kishan Maharaj and the audience.

Isabelle has been living in India since 2001 as a scholar of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in Delhi. She started learning Bharata Natyam as well as Ballet, Drama and Western music from the age of 5 and started learning Kathak with Sharmila Sharma, a disciple of Pandit. Birju Maharaj in Paris. She has completed her Honours Course Diploma and Post Diploma in 2006 at Kathak Kendra under the guidance of her Guru Pandit Jai Kishan Maharaj. Scholar of the French Ministry of Culture in 2003, she has been researching and choreographing the links between Kathak and other cultures. She has performed extensively in India and in the UK, Ukraine, Tunisia, France and Italy.

Aarti Vir

“As our glaciers melt and our forests are depleted, as our wildlife disappears, as we contaminate our water and pollute the air, as we cravenly submit before the altars of the all-consuming deities of Economics and Development, as military spending and nuclear deals forestall spending on welfare and education, as we dam our rivers and e-waste threatens to inundate us, as climate change creeps up on us, perhaps it is time to remind ourselves that our future is inextricably bound to that of this planet, International Space Centers and plans to colonize Mars notwithstanding.

There was a time when rituals of propitiation and offering served to remind humans that they were supplicants before nature. These rituals were served by vessels—altars, lamps, reliquaries and jars--both basic and elaborate, in every culture throughout the world. To me these objects represent hope, nourishment, Life. My current work consists of these objects, all hand built; the process itself, being slow and almost meditative, imbues each piece with a sense of ritual for me. All the work is fired to 1280-1300 degrees centigrade and salt-glazed.”

Aarti Vir is a graduate and a Master in Painting from Baroda and Hyderabad respectively and was an MA Ceramics attachment student at the University of Wales in Cardiff. She has trained as a potter under Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith in Pondicherry and been apprenticed to Micki Schloessingk Bridge Pottery in Wales. She has exhibited frequently in Delhi, Bombay, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Rakhee Kane Jadeja

“Since 2005 I have worked on forms inspired by the architecture and landscape of rural Rajasthan. I use three-dimensional forms, with four or five surfaces, to represent the masses and enclosures of this environment. I am trying to depict the various routine activities that take place inside the little enclosures, the central courtyard of a house, the daily activities of the village that take place in community spaces.

A feeling can be captured on a three-dimensional form in many different ways. The colors and objects I saw years ago had the strongest impact, giving me enough material to work with: the different shades of ochre, the patches of vibrant blue… windows, doors, courtyards, niches, storage jars, shelves. With clay, I have a great opportunity to come close to capturing this imagery in a unique way. It is very interesting to explore the possibilities of transforming experiences through a clay vocabulary. This exploration is not about freezing the moment but about living the experience.”

Rakhee Kane Jadeja graduated in fine arts from Baroda and holds a post-graduate diploma in ceramic design from NID, Ahmedabad. She has her own studio in Auroville and was artist-in-residence at Golden Bridge Pottery for 9 months in 2005. She has participated in numerous solo and group shows in Auroville, Baroda, Chennai and Ahmedabad.

Michel Hutin

“All my recent works have been made in the same way—joining soft undulating slabs of clay. While I control more or less the arrangement of these undulations, the lines they create at their intersections are always a surprise and often a delight. I love these lines—their rhythm, melody and counterpoint—as they interact with each other, liberating form. I also like the way light enhances the outline of the piece, a bit like looking at mountains at sunrise.

I began by building with thick slabs of soft clay, through which I cut with a thin wire. The result was fresh and spontaneous but too chancy. Now I prefer to build directly with thinner slabs—no cutting. This is simpler, more immediate, and I feel brings me a step closer towards solving a problem that concerns me very much: how to have a form look both controlled and natural at the same time.”

Michel Hutin is French and has been living and working in Auroville for more than 25 years. He is a self taught potter though he has spent some time at the Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry. He lives and works in his studio in the picturesque Auroville community of "Dana”.

Sharbani Das Gupta

“Working in clay was not something I chose to do…. It chose me. I was a graphic design graduate—but I loved clay, so I apprenticed and learnt to throw and fire it. Signing up for a porcelain class at the University of New Mexico was the next significant step. I have come to love the sensuousness and purity of porcelain, and over time, it has become my medium of choice.

The antithesis of India, New Mexico, with its wide spaces, sky, rocks and mountains, was exhilarating, and the work I made reflected the power and form of the land. Journeys too, have had a great impact—from India to the US, from New Mexico to Houston and back. Being a mother–wife–artist, living with the political tensions and contradictions of the last year—all of these have affected my experience of the clay. My work is a barometer of my life—reflecting joy, as well as concern for the environment and the human condition. It is how I try to make sense- to communicate- to have a voice.

The current body of work combines both of the disciplines that I have trained in. My design background plays an important part in the techniques I am currently employing. I generate and create images on the computer, drawing from popular culture and the political environment. These are transferred to the wet porcelain slabs that are then manipulated into the final forms.”

Sharbani Das Gupta is a graduate of The National Institute of Design. She apprenticed at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry under Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith before going on to learn ‘porcelain vessels’ at the University of New Mexico. She has exhibited in Australia, London, the USA and India.

Anjani Khanna

I remember, as a child of 6 or 7, watching a village potter effortlessly throw tea cups. I remember fearfully crouching over the wheel, while his fingers guided mine as I tried to make a pot. I remember listening to stories about the gods, of the struggle for India’s freedom, of the lives of my extended family. Myth and memory merged in my mother’s telling and with each retelling they became a part of my everyday acquaintance. I remember watching my mother adorn the baby Krishna idol at her small shrine in our home. I remember my agonistic father and me participating in prayers with bemused detachment. I remember being fascinated with human physiology and organic chemistry at college and I remember traveling across rural India as an environmental journalist, discovering my land as a young adult.

These memories and the constant confrontation with contradiction, which is a part of everyday living in India, have an influence on my work. While the written word fascinates me, clay allows me to explore subliminal and oftentimes not easily articulated intuitions in a tactile and visual way. My “yalis”, as I refer to my figurative sculpture, begin to live for me and tell their stories in their living. Their stories reflect my search as they grapple with the modern and the ancient, the personal and the universal, the male and the female, the east and the west, the rational and the intuitive, the animal and the human, the religious and the secular, and the political and the non partisan.

My figures with stylized human bodies and animal heads are made in stoneware paper clay. My work is mostly unglazed and the settling ash from the wood fire breathes life into it. I use dark and white slips, which are sprayed on, often over graphic and text stencils. I sometimes sponge on patterns. I am drawn to repetitive design and usually treat the entire piece as a single surface. I enjoy “dressing up” the fired “yalis”.

Anjani is a BSc. in zoology, a B.A. in Natural Sciences from Bombay and an M.A from Cambridge. She has worked with Sanctuary magazine, with “Down to Earth’ as a researcher, correspondent and Assistant Director, as a consultant with UNDP, in the outreach and education programme with INTACH and as editor of their magazine ‘amanat’. She was the Founder member of “Bombay Potters“ and Editor and publisher of Ceramic(some)Times: a newsletter on ceramics, published sometimes. She has been both participant and curator/organizer of various ceramic shows in India and Europe, the latest being a Paperclay symposium in Hungary and a workshop in Spain.