Free Celebration of Diwali: the Hindu Festival of Light

From Pelham Art Center:

Pelham Art Center’s popular Diwali, Hindu Festival of Lights, returns as part of its Folk Arts Series, Saturday, December 3 from 1:30-3:30PM. Join us for this colorful and festive event with a free ancient Indian classical dance performance, traditional hands-on art workshops and receive Mehndibody art from artist Manjula Kandaswamy. Also known as henna tattoos, Mehndi is a temporary form of skin decoration using henna ink, an all natural paste derived from the Henna plant. At 2:45PM, dancer Mitra Purkayatha will present the Manipuri dance also known as Jagoi, one very important Indian classical dance from Manipur, the eastern part of India that borders Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Myanmar. The beautiful dance pieces portray mythological stories and characters and Manipuri history. There will be demonstrations of a few simple hand gestures and footwork so the audience can participate. Running throughout the event will be two hands-on art workshops led by Lavanya Misra and Becky Mills. This year participants can create their own tissue marigolds, which in Hindu culture is representative of the sun. In the Rangoli workshop, participants can create decorative designs that are usually placed at the threshold of the home to bring good luck and welcome Hindu deities.

About Diwali

Diwali is a major festival for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, who believe that light is a metaphor for knowledge and signifies health, wealth and peace. Diwali is celebrated as the "Festival of Lights,” in which participants light diyas—cotton-like string wicks inserted in small clay pots filled with oil—to signify victory of good over the evil within an individual, and uplifting of spiritual darkness. The festival symbolizes unity in diversity as every region of India celebrates it in its own unique way. The five day Diwali festival usually occurs during October or November, with the main day of celebration varying regionally.

About Mitra Purkayatha

Mitra Purkayastha is an eminent Odissi dancer, dance scholar, choreographer and teacher based in New Jersey. She established her extensive teaching career in 1979 in the U.S. and in 1986 she started her now renowned dance school "Rhythms of Dance and Music" in Morristown, New Jersey. She is instrumental in popularizing Odissi and Manipuri dance in New Jersey, and she was awarded the “Nrityangana Award” by Odissa Research Academy, in the prestigious “Mahari Award Festival”, Pankaj Charan Das Utsav 2015, for her ” immense contribution towards the spread of this art form for the longest period of time in a foreign country”.

Since childhood, she has been fortunate to be a disciple of Guru Khelendra Mukherjee in Manipuri. Under the tutelage of Shanti Narayan Gupta and Anup Shankar, she has also undergone formal training in other classical dance forms, namely Bharatnatyam and Kathak.

In Mitra’s early career in dance while in Kolkata India, she was one of the primary dancers in Sangeet Natak Academy winner, Manjusri Chaki Sircar’s group till 1978 before moving to the U.S. She has also received Sangeet Prabhakar, Sangeet Visharad and Sangeet Sudhakar diplomas in dance, to give a brief glimpse of Mitra’s rigorous career. After long years of painstaking training, performing and teaching, Mitra has now established herself as a highly acclaimed choreographer and teacher of classical and classical-based creative dance and continues to perform and organize scores of dance shows, performances around New Jersey and beyond, in United States.

About the history of Manipuri dance style

Manipuri dance, also known as Jagoi, is one very important Indian classical dance from the eastern part of India called Manipur, bordering Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Myanmar. The roots of Manipuri dance, as with all classical Indian dances, is the ancient Sanskrit text Natya Shastra, but with influences from the cultural fusion between India and southeast Asia. The love story of Radha and Krishna are commonly acted out in Manipuri dance drama performance.

The Manipuri dance drama is, for the most part, marked by a performance that is graceful, fluid, and sinuous, with greater emphasis on hand and upper body gestures. It is accompanied with devotional music created with many instruments, with the beat set by cymbals and the double-headed drum.

Manipuri dance is a religious art and its aim is the expression of spiritual values. Aspects of this performance art are celebrated during Hindu festivals and major rites of passage, such as weddings among the Manipuri people, particularly in the ethnic majority of Meitei people.

Image via Pelham Art Center