Delhi NCR art festival ‘Kala Parv’ returns with its 15th edition
New Delhi: To connect school students of Delhi NCR with art and culture, the Heritage Xperiential Learning School (HXLS) is all set to host the 15th edition of the annual cultural festival ‘Kala Parv’. The festival will celebrate different forms of art –– theatre, music, dance, painting, sculpting, fashion & design, sports –– from the 22nd April to 27th April 2019 in Gurgaon. The festival intends to enlighten the minds of students towards visual and performing arts and create a center stage for the hustling people in the city to connect with art and culture.
The Kala Parv, since its inception in 2005, has been a grand celebration of fine arts and performing arts in the NCR region and brings together students from across the region who participate with full enthusiasm and zeal. This year, Kala Parv has extended the celebration to all forms of expression that help children use their skills and talents to express. In the fine arts, students will showcase their understanding of the impressionist and post-impressionist era, in performing arts they will showcase their talent in music and theatre and in sports, their athleticism in various forms. The festival will witness participation of over 2600 students who have worked in creating around 750+ art pieces for the exhibition, exploring the works of Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Seurat, Matisse and Cezanne. After extensive research and understanding the students have recreated pieces of art from the past, using modern day materials.
More than 400 students from schools in Delhi NCR are expected to visit and participate in various art workshops by acclaimed Indian artists. During Kala Parv, the whole school is transformed into an art gallery and various departments conduct workshops, shows and competitions throughout the cultural fest.
Speaking on the occasion Manit Jain Co-Founder, Heritage Xperiential Learning School (HXLS) said, “Arts and sports hold immense value in developing life skills and character in a child. From giving them the eyes to observe, curiosity, discernment, authentic expression, a strong sense of aesthetics, an appreciation of diverse cultures, spaces and design, the arts open up the beauty and joy within and outside. Children explore and master expression in several media through a carefully crafted curriculum. The physical education program helps foster skills in the areas of leadership, problem solving, collaboration and courage apart from strength, endurance, flexibility and gross and fine motor skills necessary for a range of sports and fitness. Kala Parv is a unique festival where we rejoice arts and sports to the fullest. Every student from the school participates in this celebration and showcases their talent. The school consistently focuses its efforts to provide the best exposure to students in all aspects of visual arts, performing arts and sports.”
The festival will be kick-started by the performing arts group with a screening of the popular American horror comedy rock musical by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. This will be followed by various dance, music and theatre performances involving over 300 school students. The fest will also feature, an exciting apparel exhibition of clothes made by students from non-biodegradable waste material such as flex posters, plastic bottles, wheat sacks, plastic ribbons, bubble sheets, and even coke cans. The HXLS students will also host art workshops for students from government school and for children with special needs.
The six-day long festival will see some of India’s renowned artists and performers, who will conduct workshops for students. Astha Gandhi, trained in the ‘deviant’ style of Guru Surendra Nath Jena’s Odissi dance, will host an Odissi Dance workshop; Ruikcha Sharma, trained in both Jaipur and Lucknow Gharanas with Guru Madanlal Gangani and Guru Nayanika Ghosh, will host a Khathak workshop; Vaishali Chakravarty a contemporary theatre practitioner and Artistic Director at Actor Factor Theatre Company will enlighten the students gathering on monologues and choral speaking. A classical piano workshop will be hosted by Adithya Sreeraam, a prolific keyboardist and pianist and Shashwat Srivastava, a music composer and producer with notable body of work in theatre, cinema and advertising will address the audience with a rock guitar workshop. Jimmy Chishi, a visual arts practitioner with a professional background in documentary filmmaking, who now works through the media of painting, sculpture and shadow puppetry, will host a theatre workshop on shadow puppetry.
At the Kala Parv, students will also display their sports skills during the sporting event days, with participation of over 500 students from schools across Delhi NCR. The school will host 48 matches of volleyball, hockey and football along with sporting events on track and field.
The Heritage Xperiential Learning School has been continuously working on motivating the students to create a future in arts and sports. The school recently organized a dance workshop with the renowned French choreographer Dimitri Chamblas, Dean of Dance at CalArts to provide students with a better exposure for the future. The past editions of Kala Parv explored themes like Contemporary Art, Folk Art, Golden Period, Western Renaissances, Baroque Art, Indian Renaissances and also Social Awareness themes such as Environmental Issues and Child Centric Issues.