Kashmiri cuisine, Shabana films to mark South African festival

JOHANNESBURG - Wazwan cuisine of Kashmir, a retrospective of films starring Shabana Azmi and a literary festival featuring Shobha De are among the highlights of a six-week Indian arts festival across three South African cities from Sep 5.

The third edition of the Shared Histories Festival will kick off with the 20th anniversary celebrations of South African Indian dance company Tribhangi Dance Theatre in Johannesburg, where the group’s pioneering work in fusing Indian and African dance forms will be featured.

This will be followed by youth workshops between Indian and South African NGOs, a ‘well-being experience’ day featuring 13 South African yoga schools and an Ayurvedic conference with doctors from India.

Music and dance performances by celebrated Indian artistes, including flautist Pundit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Odissi group Nrityagram, and the Daksha Seth Dance Company, will also take place.

There will be a week-long food festival highlighting Kashmiri cuisine as well as an art exhibition in both Durban and Johannesburg and a literature festival hosted by the Centre for Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand here at which leading Indian and South African writers and poets will participate.

For Indian Consul-General Navdeep Suri, the Shared Histories Festival this year will be a highlight of his tenure, after initiating it three years ago.

“Shared Histories is now a brand on its own in South Africa, seen as an integral part of the cultural calendar, not only in Johannesburg but in Durban and other places as well,” Suri told IANS.

“I think we’ve done the hard part of creating something from scratch and building it up year on year for three straight years, including this year, when in a recession it was even harder than it would otherwise have been.

“We’ve managed to not only sustain last year’s programme but have even been able to build and expand upon it; so I think my successor will have a very good platform to build on and I’m sure he will take it to even greater heights.”

Suri lauded the support and participation of the many Indian and South African corporates, academic institutions and especially the Johannesburg Arts and Culture Department, which has made the Shared Histories Festival a part of the annual Arts Alive International Johannesburg Festival.

Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork, the Indian company responsible for putting together the festival, said it was not difficult finding performers and participants to bring a different flavour to a third edition while still maintaining enough interest and diversity.

“There are so many artistes doing so many different things year in and year out that the problem is rather what to put in and what to leave out,” Roy said, adding that initiatives were under way to present a similar festival in India.

“We’re trying to enthuse the South African government to look at that very seriously and help set up something like that in India.”