By IANS,
New Delhi : The Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF), the capital’s answer to the Edinburgh festival, will reach out to the common man this year with interactive music and folk dance performances at malls and historic sites.
“The festival is bigger and spread out across more venues. It will be more interactive with more spotlight on children and related activities in public places such as DLF malls and Purana Qila,” festival director Prathibha Prahlad told IANS.
The third edition of the DIAF will be a cornucopia of music, dance, arts, literary and fusion culture shows spread across 40 venues. The festival will be held Oct 3-14.
“This time, the Delhi International Arts Festival will have something for everyone,” Prahlad said.
The highlights will include performances from Sri Lanka, Malta and Egypt; choir music, sacred Indian music, western classical music, young artists’ sections, a special Jammu and Kashmir festival featuring children, Sufi festival, a theatre festival, visual art festivals and interactive folk dance and bands nights at the DLF Vasant Kunj and Saket malls.
“The three major attractions are, however, the folk dance and bands nights at the malls which will encourage the audience to take part, the presence of 500 children in a special programme to promote the National Archives of India, a contingent of 180 children and artistes from Jammu and Kashmir to get a feel of the other India, an Edinburgh-type ‘fringe’ festival of puppets of India and a DIAF-ASI collaboration called The Dialogue with Monuments,” Prahlad said.
The dialogue, she added, was a new component to promote heritage awareness and link it to popular culture.
Citing an example, Prahlad said: “Hariharan will sing at Purana Qila and the Sufi festival will be held in Delhi venues. We will also recreate the ambience for some of the other programmes to connect it to the local heritage. We want Delhi to become the culture cauldron of India.”
While DIAF 2008 had just one film festival, DIAF 2009 has five.
“They include Bimal Roy Centenary Film Festival, Akira Kurosawa retrospective, Canadian Sports Film Festival, Turkish Film Festival and Walt Disney Film Festival. In addition, the Indian music section is on a structure of vocal solos plus instrumental,” Prahlad’s associate Arshia Sethi told IANS.
Besides, the festival will make its green statement with a special section devoted to sustainably-produced Pashmina wool from Kashmir. This section is being organised by the British Council.