Serendipity Arts Foundation, Royal Opera House, Mumbai and Avid Learning present the Mumbai Curtain Raiser for the Serendipity Arts Festival 2018 which will take place later this year in Panaji, Goa. The Serendipity Arts Festival is a multidisciplinary arts festival and a cultural experience that brings together the visual, performing and culinary arts. The evening will introduce the Festival’s fourteen lead curators, representing Visual Arts, Photography, Culinary Arts, Craft, Music, Dance, and Theatre. The event will also screen the Festival curtain raiser film for the first time presenting vignettes of 2018’s dynamic projects.

A special performance by Bharatnatyam Dancer Rukmini Vijayakumar and TheRaadha Kalpa Dance Company will be performed on our stage. The Dark Lord: Lament of the Poetess will combine dance and theatre experience to depict images of the many seekers of Lord Krishna. Following the life and voice of Meera, “the poetess of love”, the story parallels the struggles, madness, lament and ultimately, the surrender of these devotees. Drawing on the classical Indian dance vocabulary of Bharatanatyam, the experience challenges the boundaries of performance and theatre, creating visual impact by breaking down the barriers the performer and audience. This will be our second collaboration with the Festival, having presented their Annual Mumbai Curtain Raiser last year at the Opera House and presented talks as part of their Talking Culture Lecture series in Goa.

AVID works with festival platforms across the arts and literature, including Times LitFest, Jaipur Literature Festival, and The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. We began our collaboration with The Serendipity Arts Festival last year in 2017 by presenting their Annual Mumbai Curtain Raiser earlier this year in association with The Royal Opera House, Mumbai.  In Goa, the Festival will span eight exhilarating days featuring 71 projects by 14 curators across disciplines.