The 3rd Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy National Festival of Dance and Music was held during March 26 - 29, 2003.
The four-day festival was organized by JNMDA in association with Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi.
The festival was designed as a national event featuring eminent artistes and institutions from various parts of the country in the field of dance and music, including local talents, with a view to celebrating the diversity of Indian identity through living traditions of the performing arts.
The vibrancy of India's performing art traditions, their myriad and variations and their continuing relevance in the throes of change exemplify the spirit of the people of India. Manipur with its rich treasure of performing arts plays an important role as an integral part of this identity.
L Joychandra, Director of JNMDA said the major objective of the festival is "to give the people of Manipur an opportunity to obtain a fairly close insight into their tradition and examine it anew in the context of the changing society by observing and knowing performing arts of other region besides exploring and preserving their own".
The Governor Ved Marwah in his inaugural speech, laid stress on the composite culture of the country, and said the national dance and music festival for which artistes from all over the country had gathered was a unique occasion, which will go a long way towards bringing about cultural synthesis and emotional integration.
The inaugural evening of the festival saw a superb display of Pung Cholom presented by the students of JNMDA, which was followed by Darshana Jhaveri's charismatic performance in classical Manipuri dance. The evening was rounded off with a Kathak recital from the septuagenarian Rohini Bhate, an eminent Kathak dancer, teacher and scholar. One of the audiences opined that the festival was a well-provoked platform to interact different artistes of dance and music from various diverse cultural roots of India together.
On the second day of the festival today, Leibakmacha Singh his group played Pena, a traditional musical instrument of Manipur. The concentration of the audience was then altered to Bishwajit Chakraborty and his group's performance in Baul music. It showcased the sense of the richness of the music of Bengal. Baul music is one of the popular forms of performing art of Bengal, popularized by the traveling minstrels.
On the third and fourth day, dance and music performances from Sharon Lowen (Odissi), Chita Vesweshwaran (Bharatnatyam), Ulha Kashalkar (Hindustani vocal), Ranganathan Visweswaran (santoor), as well as Bihu and Bhortal dance, Chhau, folk dance and music from Meghalaya were staged.
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