Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Independence Day


To celebrate this occasion, the Embassy of India organized a programme of Indian dances at the Plaza Mayor, Madrid.

All Members of the Indian Community and All Friends of India in Spain were invited to see the programme.

Bharat Natyam by Tatyana Popova. She´s from Kazhakstan who studied in Kalakshetra around 15 years!

Bollywood style dance by Silvia and Isabel. Their first dance was fun but after dancing to 2-3 songs we were just too bugged. I mean, it was like they didn´t want to get off the stage.

Flamenco Performance by Pepa Chacon. Good guitarrist and singer, amazing voice she has, but the flamenco dancer was just not worth it. Sad!... and by the way, don´t know why there was a flamenco perfomance on our Independence day. Perhaps a Kathak-flamenco fusion would have been better.

Bollywood Masala by Masala Group. Finally an Indian face! This was really fun now. Just like in the movies.

Bhangra by Surinder Singh and company. Punjabi fun.

Bhangra, Bollywood and Masala join to invite Public to the mass dance. Best part of the programme. All of us danced.

Vote of Thanks. A necessary formality.

Plus points:
Very friendly and humble Ambassador. Sat with everyone else on the ground. Accepted the idea of asking people to move back and sit on the ground so more could see the stage.
Nice audience. Very appreciative and participative
Free show organized in the centre of Madrid.
Met a long lost friend from JNU.
Enjoyed some forgotten songs again.
Cute bhangra dancing guy.

Not plus points:
No chairs (bad organization).
Weak programme, lacked quality... why flamenco? why so few programmes?
Same problems with loud speakers (the keech sounds and of course they were blaring).




I don´t know why i´m so negative these days.

4 comments:

ravptor said...

all i had here was google videos and a parade that lasted a couple of blocks... had dokhla though so.....

happy independence dy!

a.g said...

if i had gone to the flag hoisting in the morning i would have had some dokhlas, vadas, samosas too. but i decided to wait till october. less than amonth and a half left!

Anonymous said...

I almost fell off my chair when I read about Bharata Natyam by a Kazakh!

Sometimes I feel, we Indians dont take much interest in foreign cultures... ah, forget about Amereeki and Angrezi stuff but Mongolian, Japanese, Mexican, Russian... you know, we never do that stuff... I wonder how many of us would participate in a Spanish event organized by the Spanish Embassy here!

This is really good to see.

a.g said...

Atlantean, i think quite a few of us would be ready to participate(and i would probably be the first one)... but would they let us?

and kind of surprising that we couldn´t find any indians to do the bharat natyam.