A Few Words on the Festival

 ‘Tanti’ in old Pali language is usually imagined as a ‘thread’ going beyond time and ‘Dhatri’ - the woman who holds it.  In our performing arts language this ‘thread’ can have various meanings. It can be the thread that holds transparent beads of different colours and reflects the same colour as the beads. The thread can be lineage, generations,  Master/pupil relationships, independent auto-didactic realities, the practice of workshops and training, traditional schooling in performing arts all over the world, the passing on of a craft through family connections or apprenticeship, or the absence of references. These are different examples of how performing knowledge and practice is transmitted from one generation to the other.

Tantidhatri brings together the performance works of women masters across the globe (both created from self-expression and sacred arts) ranging from Theatre, Music, Dance, to the Visual Arts, Ritual and Spirituality. The generation of women who now embody life -experience in their works and will share these experiences generously with their audiences in Puducherry and in Auroville.
 The Tantidhatri Festival is an occasion to meet these women master practitioners, artists, intellectuals, writers and scholars from various backgrounds and lineages, as well as interacting with them through workshops and talks.

  This is a festival inspired from the Transit Festival created by actress and writer Ms. Julia Varley of the Odin Theatret Denmark, also a founder member of the Magdalena project.  Like the Transit and The Magdalena Project, The Tantidhatri Festival in India is committed to nurturing an awareness of women’s contribution to the performing arts and to support exploration and research by offering concrete opportunities to the discerning women, both in the profession and in life. The Tantidhatri Festival encourage women to examine their role in the future of theatre and performance, by presenting their work, by sharing methodologies, by examining form as well as content and by venturing into new collaborative projects.

 Many individual artists and collaborators have come together from Auroville and Puducherry and Shri Lalit Verma of Aurodhan has come forward to make this unique festival happen…

Parvathy Baul