In which there is a flurry of colour

The cool thing about living at this theatre is that there are constantly invitations to various artsy functions arriving in the mail. It seems that most of the time they are ignored for the pleasures of staying in and doing whatever it is that old people do at night. This means that I get to pick and choose from these ignored invitations and venture out to events.

Today, Jalabala brought to my attention an invitation to the inauguration of a folk dance festival. Originally, she was going to come with me, but then they started shooting, which pretty much kills the plans of anyone who is in there. So I went alone.

It was held in Talkatora Stadium, which is so *clearly* a sporting arena. A round……. rink, basically, minus the ice of course. Half of this round was seating for the President, press, and other important people. The other half was taken up by the fairly magnificent stage. There was (obviously) a large, flat area for the dancing, but it was surrounded by ramps, staircases, platforms, and doors, all styled to look like the remains of some great castle. I played the “what script would I stage in this space” game with a neverending series of possibilities.

I picked what I *thought* was a good seat, until I realized that there was a lighting tree in my line of vision. Granted, I’m pretty sure that no matter *where* I sat I would have had a lighting tree in my line of vision, or at least the lights on the trees in my eyes (most obnoxious house lighting *ever*). If I leaned a little to my left, I could see fine. There were rows and rows of performers seated on the far sides of the stage, which was sparkly and colourful to look at. Not to mention there were about a dozen seats occupied by little puppet people. Puppets!

I’m starting to hate this “be sitting in your seat ages before the performance starts” thing. Especially in this case, since the President was coming, so you had to wait that much longer for him to arrive, process inside, and the national anthem to play.

*Finally*, the lights dimmed, various introductions were made, and the show began.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I saw was absolutely spectacular. Every single troupe performed in the space of what couldn’t have been much more than an hour. We’re talking *hundreds* of performers here. All of the performances were interwoven and overlapping, the next group waiting on the ramps and staircases (doing what can only be called supporting dancing) while the primary group performed. Sometimes groups with similar styles (primarily the more gymnastic ones) would do bits together.

I wasn’t able to find where to buy a program, so I can’t really say what specific dances I saw. I know that they were a variety of tribal, military, and another genre of dance. Mostly, if not all from India. Some of the performers looked like they were from other parts of Asia. There was a lot of hip action and spinning. A number of groups (mostly tribal genres I think) involved balancing things like jars, lanterns, puppets, and three foot tall tiers of flaming things on their heads. Human pyramids of various size and shape were formed, as well as a variety of other feats of strength that comprised of balancing/carrying other dancers while still dancing. Overall, it was really quite impressive.

The ending consisted of *all* of the dancers coming onstage and doing a little final hip action together. Then the President did his congratulations and left, allowing the rest of us to leave as well.

I had a bit of an incident trying to get home. It took me for-fucking-ever to hail a damn cab. After half an hour of not being able to get one to stop at all, the first four I stopped either didn’t know where I wanted to go, or just didn’t want to go there. The autorickshaw that I *finally* got tried to drop me off at the *back* of the hospital next door, and really grumbled about having to drive around to the gate that I had told him to drop me off at in the first place. And then, he shortchanged me. Jerk.

When I did get back in, I found that the power was out, as was my cat. I found my cat long before the power came back on. Eventually, electricity was restored and there was dinner.