Film club                                                                                          june 07 programmes saturday 23rd june 7.00 pm ‘Dance Without Frontiers Festival’ Odissi by Masako Ono    Where feminine beauty and grace is to be depicted the traditional Indian classical form Odissi is the dance form of choice. Where the lyrical beauty of the 12th century poem by Jayadeva The Gitagovinda is to be expressed Odissi is again the most expressive form and where the various moods of Radha as a woman in love, as a jealous or joyful or rejected lover needs to be most passionately portrayed we turn again to Odissi. This evening Masako Ono is not only Radha but transforms her art to express the beautiful Haiku poems of Japan, the gentle Buddhist influences which link India and the country of her birth. She shows snippets of her earlier choreographic work and talks about herself and the dance that she has imbibed and enriched in her own charming style and performs all around the world. Masako started dancing at the age of 4, learning in her early years modern dance from Masako Yokoi, the only Japanese modern dance graduate from the Martha Graham Dance School, western classical ballet at the Matsuyama Ballet and jazz and hip hop in Tokyo. Masako learnt Odissi in Nrityagram from Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy where she also attended classes and workshops  in Yoga, Kalaripayattu, Mayurbhanj Chhau, Wolfgang Theatre and Paul Taylor 2 Company. She  has been living in Orissa where she received further training from Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, Guru Ramani Ranjan Jena and Guru Naba Kishore Mishra.   duration of the games, the non sporting aspects of the games actually begin many years earlier with the decision to allocate the games to a certain city. The military strategy of planning, promoting and bribing begins at this stage. By the time the athletes arrive on the scene their desperation to win combined with national frenzies to ‘beat’ their competitors result in breathtaking dramas of glory, shame or humiliation. But at the center of the modern Olympics is the problem of doping and performance enhancing drugs.Dr. Paul Sequeira discusses this evening the role of the major pharmaceutical companies in producing the artificial enhancing drugs and genetic engineering, all with the purpose of improving performance through prohibitive means. She has performed and given lecture-demonstrations and workshops in India, Japan, USA, Canada, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka and has performed for two Prime Ministers of Japan. She will be performing in Japan as part of an ICCR group with 5 Indian dancers in the Indo-Japan friendship year as also in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and in Europe for a collaborative production with Dutch and Indonesian choreographers.    thursday 28th june 7.00 pm “The Olympic Games: War by Other Means” a talk by Paul Sequeira Serious sport is war minus the shooting -  George Orwel The Olympic games are not only a sporting event. Contained within their rich and ancient history of 3000 years are aspects of politics, business, sport, and yes even war. Inspite of the efforts of the organizers to promote this event as conforming to the ancient ideal of laying down your arms and declaring a truce for the duration of the games, the non sporting aspects of the games actually begin many years earlier with the decision to allocate the games to a certain city. The military strategy of planning, promoting and bribing begins at this stage. By the time the athletes arrive on the scene their desperation to win combined with national frenzies to ‘beat’ their competitors result in breathtaking dramas of glory, shame or humiliation. But at the center of the modern Olympics is the problem of doping and performance enhancing drugs.Dr. Paul Sequeira discusses this evening the role of the major pharmaceutical companies in producing the artificial enhancing drugs and genetic engineering, all with the purpose of improving performance through prohibitive means.  Dr. Paul Sequeira, is a graduate in both Biochemistry and a Phd in school administration from New York. He has been a department chairman, elementary and middle school principal, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Superintendent of Schools in Westchester, New York, New Britain, Connecticut, Trenton, New Jersey, and is currently serving as the Superintendent in the Waterbury School System. Dr. Sequeira was an Associate Professor of Education and Psychology at Western Connecticut State University.He is presently serving the Qatar government as a consultant for Charter Schools and also serving the Board of Directors of the New Britain General Hospital, the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra, Mattituck Museum, and the Community Health Center. saturday 30th june 7.00 pm “Return of The Dastangos” – two new tales from the Dastan-e Amir Hamza by Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain The Dastangos return with two new tales from their repertoire. Those familiar with the Dastan tradition will revel in this new web of trickery spun by Amar Ayyar and Barq Firangi aka Kalwarin. The second Dastan is illustrative of an epic war between the Jadoogars and the Ayyars. Mahmood and Danish have performed these two Dastans in Pakistan and Mumbai and will perform them in Delhi for the first time. Dastans are epic narratives and their recitation, including performance and narration, is "Dastangoi". Beginning with a now untraceable, original Arabic version, the story of Hamza, and his exploits against infidels, sorcerers and pretenders to divinity, spread first to the Persian and then to many parts of the Islamic world. In India the story was already immensely popular in the sixteenth century and one of the first artistic projects commissioned by the Emperor Akbar was an illustration of the Hamza dastan, a work that became known as the Hamzanama, which consisted of over 1200 huge folios. With its transmission into Urdu in the 18th and 19th centuries the Dastan of Amir Hamza came to acquire the mammoth size that is peculiar to Indic storytelling. In its structure it partook of the formal devices of classical music and Urdu poetry. In performance it connected with oral recitation forms of many different kinds-qissagoi, marsiyagoi, poetry recitation, naqal, bhandgiri-that dotted the Indian public sphere in the pre-colonial era. The Art of Dastangoi is at once the art of composition and of performance, parts of it are woven extemporaneously, as one is narrating/performing it. The revival of Dastangoi over the last one and a half year has been made possible largely because of the painstaking scholarly work of S R Farooqi, the only person to own the entire 46 volume collection, painstakingly built up in the course of his research. Mahmood Farooqui is a Delhi based writer and actor. He is currently researching a book on the Ghadar of 1857. Danish Husain is a theatre actor. His latest projects include establishing a repertory, The Actors' Project, and a new play, The Mahatma and The Poet, by M.K. Raina to be premiered in August in Kolkata. He has also acted in a British film Losing Gemma and is a published poet and a writer.