Navarasa Dance Theater: Encounter
Saturday, October 29, 2011
8:00 PM in Slosberg Recital Hall
Preconcert Talk: Isaac Thomas Kottukapally, speaker. Award winning Producer, Director and Music Director of ad films, documentaries and feature films, Kottukapally received the Indian National and State Film Award Best Music direction in 2011.
7:00-7:45 PM at Slosberg Music Center

“…an experience that stunned the audience with its complexity and beauty.” - Times of India, December, 2008

“… Navarasa’s choreography is grounded in traditional Indian dance, but reaches outward. They incorporate modern dance, Indian martial arts, aerial dance, Bollywood’s pop influences — all with an eye for originality and a skillful use of space, sending dancers into eye-catching floor patterns…” - Boston Globe, Sep, 2010

“While her (Aparna Sindhoor) production is sure to cause controversy among traditionalists of Bharatnatyam, she pushes the boundaries in a way that allows expansion of the art form without deserting it altogether.” – Lokyani, July, 2007

ENCOUNTER explores different encounters- encounter with the Divine, encounter with Self, encounter with Bob Marley, encounter with Love, and encounter with the Military. The first encounters are explored through dance. Each piece has a unique feel to it ranging from contemporary, modern to classical and folk. The encounter with the Military is based on a story about an indigenous woman, Dopdi, inspired by Magsaysay award winning writer Mahasweta Devi’s story and adapted for the stage by S M Raju and Aparna Sindhoor. ENCOUNTER explores imageries from the history and the world around whether it is the Native American history or indigenous peoples history elsewhere or a modern day occurrence in Iraq or Afghanistan or Rwanda. Dr. Mohan Agashe (veteran Indian actor) says, “[Encounter] is a powerful piece. It is gorgeously staged. The dances are beautiful, and the impact of the show makes one think about it for a long time.”

This concert concludes Navarasa’s residency, part of the MusicUnitesUS Intercultural Residency Series at Brandeis University.

Improvisations: Raga in Afghanistan and North India
Saturday, March 10, 2012
8:00 PM in Slosberg Recital Hall
Pre-Concert Talk by ethnomusicologist and residency curator Theodore Levin
7:00-7:45 PM at Slosberg Music Center

Homayun Sakhi, Afghan rubâb; Ken Zuckerman, sarod; Salar Nader, tabla

Master performers virtuosically reunite two historically kindred stringed instruments through the common language of raga and tala

Homayun Sakhi is the outstanding Afghan rubab player of his generation. Sakhi’s performance style has been shaped not only by traditional Afghan and Indian music, but by his lively interest in contemporary music from around the world. Born in Kabul into one of Afghanistan’s leading musical families, he studied rubab with his father, Ustad Ghulam Sakhi. Homayun Sakhi maintains a worldwide concert schedule and is active in teaching rubab to young Afghans, both in Afghanistan and in the West.

Ken Zuckerman, internationally acclaimed as one of the finest sarod virtuosos performing today, has also been called “…one of the world’s most eclectic masters of improvisation.” He completed thirty-seven years of training under the rigorous discipline of India’s legendary sarod master Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, up to the maestro’s passing in June 2009. He also performed with Maestro Khan in numerous concerts in Europe, India, and the United States and with some of India’s finest tabla virtuosos (Swapan Chaudhuri, Zakir Hussain and Anindo Chatterjee).

Salar Nader, born in Germany in 1981, is one of his generation’s leading performers on the tabla. A disciple of the great tabla master Zakir Hussain, Salar Nader frequently accompanies Homayun Sakhi as well as other performers of Afghan and North Indian classical music. A resident of San Francisco, Nader recently appeared as an on-stage musician in an American theatrical adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel, The Kite Runner.

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