Indian artistes to make a mark at Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Monks from the Tibetan Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in Mysore have been to the Fringe twice before. This year’s highlights include ritual music and dance. Jane Rasch of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery UK Trust explains:

How is the music sacred?

The music is taken from the day-to-day practice of the monastery’s prayer. In Tashi Lhunpo’s tradition, these chants are sometimes melodic, sometimes mantra-like chanting. The instruments of the monastic orchestra are used in some of the chants — the khang-ling (leg-bone trumpets), Drilbu (bell) and dorje, Silnyen (cymbals) and Nga (drum). In Choed (Cutting), the leg bone trumpet and special drum summon deities to take part in the ultimate compassionate offering — that one’s own body be taken as a feast for the demons in return for their conversion to become loving and compassionate selves.

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What is the myth behind the masks?

The masked dances of Tashi Lhunpo’s Gyutor Festival, the precursor to Tibetan New Year, present images of the deities in motion, their beautiful materials representing their heavenly dress. In Edinburgh, the monks will perform extracts from the Black Hat Dance (Shanak) in which they disguise themselves as demons in order to destroy them from within. The dance of the Stag and the Buffalo (Sha-ma) symbolises the clearing away of all impurities from the preceding year in order to prepare for a new start. In Dur-Dak (The Lords of the Cemetery), the skeleton costumes and masks remind the audience of the necessity to prepare for the next life — underneath, we are all made of bones.

There’s drama, action, hope, spice, love and fight sequences.

Bollywood Express

The Aditya Birla Integrated School in Mumbai for students with learning difficulties plans to take audiences into one of India’s most colourful obsessions — Bollywood. Rehaan Bharucha, Director-Events, of the school says it is more than song and dance:

What’s on board the Bollywood Express?

There’s drama, action, hope, spice, love and fight sequences. The story centres around a boy who comes to Mumbai with the hope of making it big in Tinsel Town. He lands an odd job on a film set, which finally leads to him becoming India’s biggest superstar. There is little or no dialogue, and dance, music and video tie the story together.

Who is driving the show?

The 26 performers are students from Grade 6 through 12, with one piece by the show’s choreographer, Rohit Kamble. While certain students have received formal training in dance and theatre, we are an amateur school troupe travelling to the Fringe.

Eye on Edinburgh

A pick of the fare at the Fringe

Awkward Happiness: In a relationship, do we search for happiness in the other person? Or is it our own demons that we want reflected in our partners? This theatre-visual art piece explores these questions through a couple’s journey

Aaabeduation – A Magic Show: “Do you want happiness, laughter and bliss,” ask Malin Nilsson and Charlie Caper. They guarantee nothing except an “incredibly positive emotional state” from this magic-variety show.

2 Girls, 1 Cup of Comedy: Standups Sam Baines and Helen Sorren have the Funny Women Awards 2014 to prove their rib-tickling credentials.

Abigoliah’s GoPro Comedy Talk Show: This New York City performer has a camera on her head, fire tricks up her sleeve and games under her belt as she turns the audience into the stars of a talk show.

Delhi based standup comedian Papa CJ.

Papa CJ: Naked

The Delhi-based standup bares all in his show, Naked.

How Naked?

The idea behind Naked is that, as human beings, we build walls around ourselves that protect us from the outside world and, sometimes, even from ourselves. In this show, one brick at a time, I remove these walls, exposing myself with all my vulnerabilities and pain. This is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. At the end of it, I am completely naked, I have nothing to hide or hide behind and, therefore, I am also completely free.

And why?

Naked is a show that comes to you when you are ready for it. It is not something you can wake up one morning and decide to create. I could not have performed this show five years ago because, then, Naked was three doors behind the door I was standing in front of (in my head). It is a show that, at times, involves talking about deeply intense and personal topics and yet requires you to be funny but without trivializing the issues or misrepresenting the depth of emotions — that is a fine line.

The Edinburgh Fringe will be held from August 7-31.