By Susheela Menon The dancer moves to the beat of the idakka, a highly revered percussion instrument of Kerala, at a 2000-year-old temple in South India. She moves from one sanctum to the other till reaching the shrine of Kali, the most powerful goddess in the Hindu pantheon. A crowd gathers as she dances before
By Tin Gamboa What is the value of art? Who is it for? How can the arts be funded properly, and should it be when poverty is rampant? These urgent questions — as well as issues like large divides between social classes and extensive bureaucracy — frame the complicated needs of art-making in the Philippines.
By Victor Swoboda The embattled culture of Norway’s Indigenous Sami people is at the heart of work by Elle Sofe Sara, a 39-year-old dancemaker and filmmaker whose presentations over the past several years have alerted European audiences to her people’s history. Her 2021 choreography, Vástádus eana — The answer is land, opens Montreal’s 16-day Festival