Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Catching on some Uzbek culture

There was some Uzbekistani troupe performing at Ravindralaya theatre in Lucknow today. I've never been close to either the cultural scene in Lucknow or any foriegn dance troupe performances, so it was going to be a new - maybe alien - experience to me. Ravindralaya theatre is one of the oldest and most well known theatres of Lucknow, situated right opposite to the Lucknow Rly Stn. I've seldom read about events and performances taking place in the newspapers over there. I was lucky to have a new acquaintance in Nitin - whose father is a theater director himself. Nitin gets all the free passes. And nobody can say no to such invitations.

After an hour and half of performances, I left the theatre in quite an uplifted mood. The dances were brilliant, the dresses dazzling. Choreography, particularly, was top-notch. Its nice to learn that such art and culture thrive in some of the lesser gifted parts of the world (Uzbekistan is 'doubly' landlocked, isnt it).
I haven't been cultured too much, so there was the initial kick of the music and faces having resemblance to those in Borat. But I did get out of it, and soon grew in awe of their dances. Everything was upbeat, sometimes even funny. And fast. The girl performances were in groups of 4 or more - except for one - while the boys performed a couple of solo dances, which I felt odd about. It was easy to generalise how they perceive the sexes - girls had rythmic, flowing movements while the boys were jerky and slightly crude.

I left with a taste of traditional dance and music, to start thinking over how bollywood has totally bastardised the artform. India arguably has the largest number of dance forms, and today we know very little about them. The era of grace and finesse seems gone with the commercialisation. While watching the performances, I could only imagine how rubbish this would seem when translated to the jeans crowd, and the likes that get labeled a 'dancer' today. I think I need a greater dose of classical music and dance now.

Atul looked mesmerised by the show as well. As he (insensitively) put it: "Alif Laila ki yaad aa gayi, YAAR!". Now don't star drawing conclusions, everybody has their way of expressing things.

UPDATE: Their group photo graced the front page of one of the Hindi dailies the next day.

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