Top Events from Serendipity Arts Festival Goa

Serendipity Arts Festival is a multidisciplinary event on the banks of the river Mandovi in Panaji, Goa. A cultural experience in itself, the festival brings together visual, performing and culinary arts. Curated by a panel of artists and institutional figures, this second edition will feature over 70 art projects including 40 projects that are commissioned specifically for the festival.

This year we were Fortunate to Witness the event.

Here are some interesting event picks from Serendipity Arts Festival

Performance by Parikrama

Parikrama is a legendary rock band that plays classic rock-based music, fused with Indian instruments like the Tabla and the Violin, and has been around since 1991.
They were able to mesmerize the crowd with their awesome performance

Shiv Yin

Shiv Yin is a rare performance bringing China and India together through dance and music.

It is a beautiful love story that traverses the emotions of love, anger, jealousy and ultimate union, through a vibrant interpretation of classical Indian and contemporary Chinese dance forms. It explores the concept of the Male and the Female/ Yin and Yang through two distinct cultures

In a larger context Shiv Yin searches for commonalities between two great civilizations.

Renowned choreographer and dancer Rukmini Chatterjee is the artistic director. Chinese Contemporary Choreographer Aimin Teng is the Co-choreographer and acclaimed musician and composer Bickram Ghosh has composed the music.

Purush

Purush is a curated piece with only male performers that will showcase their strength, power and masculinity. The theme is “Shiva – the Quintessential Man”. The dancers, selected by curator Tanusree Shankar, will be from India, and the piece will be choreographed by Robert Moses Kin.

The Coconut story
Curated by Odette Mascarenhas

Celebrating the spirit of the versatile coconut, an ingredient so essential to coastal cuisines, a selection of Goan chefs and establishments will create signature dishes as a lead up to and during the Festival, showcasing the range of Goan cuisine.

Explorations with Shadow and Light

An evening of contemporary - classical music with original songs by the band Shadow and Light, in collaboration with three gifted musicians, conceived and directed by Ranjit Barot.

Stand on the Street
Curated By Aruna Ganesh Ram

Four performers will recreate life moments of various street vendors framing the street as a performance space, sharing personal narratives, conversations around food and their aspirations. The audience journey from one crafted space into another, in promenade style, encountering a new space and a new story, one after the other.
The confluence of song, narrative and rhythm will heighten audience senses as the ubiquitous street food becomes fascinating when one learns of the labour and love for food, hand cooked, hand served. The performance questions the audience’s relationship with street food and enable discoveries while bringing back fond memories of the times spent on the street.

A Cinematic Imagination: Josef Wirsching and

The Bombay Talkies

This exhibition showcases, for the very first time, a sampling of rare, original photographs and digital reprints of early Indian cinema from the Wirsching Archive. The selection for the Serendipity Arts Festival comprises behind-the-scenes photographs of cast and crew, production stills, and publicity images. These photographs, shot primarily on 35mm with a Leica camera between the 1920s – 60s, give us unprecedented access to the aesthetic decisions, creative communities, and cross-cultural exchanges that were vital to filmmaking in late colonial India. The acclaimed production studio, Bombay Talkies, played a major role in defining the form of mainstream film in India, established by Himanshu Rai in 1934. This exhibition foregrounds the critical role of German technicians and interwar image-making practices in the history of Indian cinema, presenting some of the best-known actors and technicians from Devika Rani, Ashok Kumar and Leela Chitnis, to Jairaj, Hansa Wadkar, and Dilip Kumar. The exhibition is a tribute to one of the forgotten pioneers of Indian cinema, the cinematographer Josef Wirsching.