Incredible India: Arisi-Grains of Rice Produced by Indian Performing Arts Samskriti

Samskriti’s Incredible India brings to Houston Singapore’s renowned Apsaras Arts Dance Company in Arisi – Grains of Life, a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary performance inspired by the grains of life (rice) that link humanity across Asia.

Samskriti’s Incredible India brings to Houston Singapore’s renowned Apsaras Arts Dance Company in Arisi – Grains of Life, a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary performance inspired by the grains of life (rice) that link humanity across Asia.

In a shift away from epic storytelling, award-winning artistic director Aravinth Kumarasamy has imagined the dance production as episodic vignettes that intersect stages of rice cultivation with gestural rites and rituals in life stages where rice is the principal ingredient in these ceremonies.

Dramaturged by Lim How Ngean, a performance-maker, dramaturg and dance researcher, this performance takes the audience though a kaleidoscope of dynamic images brought to life through Bharatanatyam dance.

Apsaras Arts shares the stage with their traditional Balinese peers and collaborates with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra to melodically enhance the music score. Arisi features an immersive soundscape created through live Indian and Chinese instruments performed and sung by leading award-winning Indian artists and eminent Singapore Chinese Orchestra musicians, Balinese Gamelan, and kecak choric singing to echo and accent certain scenes. The production also incorporates a powerful filmic layer of stories from former farmer migrants who eke an existence in developing foreign lands.

In addition to the extraordinary choreography and the beautiful melding of Indian and Balinese dance forms and music, the tastefully designed costumes, their colors and fabrics represent rice grains and fields, both in India and Bali, and this further enhances the amazing production.

Samskriti, meaning ‘cultural tradition’ in Sanskrit, is a non profit arts organization that was established in 1995 with the mission of becoming an efficient cultural conduit between the East and the West. By presenting world renowned Indian artists to Houston audiences and by promoting cross-cultural programs involving artists from different ethnic backgrounds in meaningful collaborations, Samskriti has more than amply fulfilled its mission in its nearly three decades of service, enriching the Houston arts scene and creating a strong niche for itself in the mainstream.