The Ocean dance festival organised by Nrityajog in collaborations with Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Tourism of Bangladesh at Cox’s Bazar, a breath-taking beach city in Southern Bangladesh is a conglomeration of forty organizations under the umbrella of the World Dance Alliance. The festival will take place from November 22 to 25, 2019 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Ocean Dance festival is envisioned as a showcasing of mainly Bangladeshi dance interspersed by performances from South Asia and the Asia Pacific. The Key-note speeches will be delivered by Bangladeshi-British dancer, Akram Khan; Dr Urmimala Sarkar, President; WDA-Asia Pacific and Bangladeshi dancer, Lubna Marium, VP, WDA-Asia Pacific.
“In the contemporary geopolitical scenario, people look at each other as shadows of their own political minds. People are not agents of the agenda. People are people, with the same dreams for their children, with the same fondness for love, with the same prayers for good health and the same desires of prosperity. That is why cross-border people-to-people contact is pivotal to world peace,” the philosophy behind ocean dance festival says Lubna Marium, artistic director at Shadhona, a centre for the advancement of South Asian culture that works towards the preservation of intangible performative cultural heritage also Vice president of World Dance Alliance, Asia pacific.
The socio-cultural similarities across the border take our cultural practices on another level whereas we are equally enthusiastic about the puja, as well as we celebrate our classical dances old verses and poetry of Krishna rasa, Shiva tandava etc. A Sanskrit scholar Marium said that we aren’t even conscious about someone’s religion I teach both Hindu and Muslim students and for me, they are one,” political geographies cannot dictate our cultural practices. This has made me realize that we need to organize such kind of cross border cultural exchange festival where we can share our classical cultural philosophies and dance.
Dance has its own language; it’s a language of the soul, it’s a way of communication to this universe, especially classical dance forms. The performing arts encompasses human emotions and experiences in its works and through them informs society about truths of life, God and moral conduct to be followed by a man in the form of entertainment. The Ocean dance Festival includes Key-note speeches, academic seminars, workshops, performances and lecture demonstrations, on a ‘theme Bridging the Gap”’ by participants from all over the Asia Pacific concluding with the AGM. This year the theme is ‘Bridging the Gap’, between generation tradition and innovation through the lens of social, cultural and economic position within the society and its cultural sphere.
