Radha Anjali´s blog

Tonight we had a beautiful concert by Alexei Stroganov who is now Alokesh Chandra and a student of Pandit Ravi Shankar. He was accompanied by Gerhard Rosner who recently made his masters degree for Tabla at the University of Pune. It was special because 10 years back Alokesh was playing his first concert in my studio. While I was listening to the music I remembered all the 10 years back and all what has happened in my life. Even much before those 10 years. The very beginning of classical Indian concerts in Vienna. The very beginning of non Indians learning Indian arts. The many prejudices we all where facing. It was indeed a long journey with many fights against those narrow minded people who thought Indian art is for Indians only. The same people were listening to opera singers and musicians of western classical music who were not from the west but from the east, Japan, China, India. It was that kind of "eurozentristisches Denken" which is so strange to me. I still remember...

Who brought Indian dance to Austria and Vienna long before the word bollywood was known? Before World War II there was a show of Uday Shankar and his group at the Wiener Konzerthaus but before and after that hardly anything is known. With the foundation of the Austro-Indian Association on 17th June 1963 things changed and a few dance performances with great artists have been organised. With the regular Bharatanatyam classes held by Radha Anjali at the Sportsinstitute of the University of Vienna since 1981 and the foundation of Natya Mandir on 3rd December 1983 even more things changed. But let us look back to the year 1976 when the beautiful and captivating Indian dancer Kama Dev came to Vienna and performed here with his beautiful partner Urvashi and everybody was spellbound. It was for the first time that a classical Bharatanatyam dance repertoire and dances from the styles Kuchipudi and Seraikella Chhau were performed on stage with proper explanations before each item. Moreove...