Chandigarh, 2nd August: H.E. Sh. Shivraj V. Patil, Governor of Punjab and Administrator, UT Chandigarh today inaugurated a ten day festival of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s work encompassing components of dance, drama and paintings to commemorate the 150th Anniversary celebrations of the renowned noble laureate .Today’ to highlight the works of this great legend , a dance drama Chitrangada was presented by a group of more than 35 reputed artists of Sangeet Bhavana, a Visva –Bharti Repertory from Shantinekan, the educational hub of Guru Dev Rabindranath. This Dance drama Chitrangada is based on a story from famous Mahabharata epic which revolves around Arjuna the famous Pandava , King Chitravahana and her only daughter Chitragandha whom the king treated as a son and taught her the use of the bow and duties of the King. The story from the Mahabharata relates to the wonderings in fulfillment of a vow of penance when Arunjan came to Manipur and his fateful meeting with Chitranaga in forest.
The climax of the dance drama in the closing scene of Chitranaga invokes the spring season which nourishes in its being an all conquering Spirit of life as well as that of love which expresses itself in an inexhaustible variedness of beauty. The reputed artists who performed in this dance drama have also given such spectacular performances inother dance drama.The Roles of Arjuna in different scenes were performed by Saurav Chatterjee, Moloyshankar Chattopadhyaya, Debangshu Majumdar and the different roles of Chitrangada in forms of Kurupa and, Surupa have been performed by renowned artist Sunetra Majumdar and Manini Mukhopadhyaya.
The Dance drama back stage performers on different musical instrument were Sita Ram Das, Shaktiprasad Chatraborty on Tabla, Sunil Kabiraj and Buddhadeb Das on Esraj,Animesh Chanda on Key board , N.P.Shankarnarayanan on Chenda & Eddeka. The music and dance direction have been given by Indrani Mukhapapsadhayay, Swastika Mukhopapadhyay , Y.Hemanta Kumar, Basanta Mukhopadadhyay.
The ongoing Festival of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s works at Tagore theatre shall witness another popular play Jeevit aur mrit, directed by Kuldeep Sharma.