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WEEK of June 6, 2005 |
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Hands (and Feet) Across the Water by Jeffrey Stanley A special dance concert was held last week at BFS to help provide tsunami relief as well as a cultural exchange. The tsunami relief came in the $10 ticket sales, all proceeds of which were sent to the Kalakshetra Foundation, a cultural academy and revered Bharata Natyam dance school in India. Bharata Natyam is an ancient and elegant form of Indian dance originally performed in temples as a form of worship, but which today tends to be performed in secular settings as a form of classical entertainment. The faculty and students at Kalakshetra, founded in 1936 in Chennai, India, saw their community affected by December’s tsunami and have been reaching out to help their neighbors. The funds raised by last week’s concert will help them in their local relief efforts. The cultural exchange not only occurred internationally when students here were introduced to the Bharata Natyam dance style by a master performer, but also locally when the BFS dance department reached out to performers from other Brooklyn schools and invited them to pitch in with the relief effort. The final product was Wave of Relief, Dancers Dancing for Dancers. The concert itself consisted of dance students from Saint Ann’s, Packer Collegiate, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and BFS performing encore presentations of pieces they had choreographed and presented earlier this year at their respective schools. Before the concert, guest Bharata Natyam performer Sonali Skandan offered a 90 minute crash course in the dance form for any interested dancers from the various schools. Skandan and this multi-school mix then kicked off the concert with a devotional Bharata Natyam performance in honor of the Lord Shiva. The idea for a tsunami fundraising concert linking Brooklyn dance classes not only with each other but with Kalakshetra originated with BFS first grade dance teacher Briar Chatterjea while on a recent trip to India with her family. She then approached performing arts co-chair Marna Herrity who loved the idea. They sprang into action and began contacting other schools to organize the event. “I have to thank all of the dance teachers for motivating their students to do just one more performance this year,” said Chatterjea to the audience. She and Herrity also gave special thanks to BFS senior Hannah Bary for lighting design, BFS technical director Catherine Clark, Gwendolyn Dunaif of the Foundation for Ethnic Dance, and dance faculty Katie Gibson (Packer Collegiate), Fiona Marcotty (Saint Ann’s) and Helen Tocci (BFS and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange). |
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