Following are youtube links to their final, semifinal and initial performances.

Final (Dasavatar act):

Semifinal (Flag act):

Initial (Krishna act):

Bharati: the wonder that is India is a musical extravaganza that is touring in various countries, mostly in Europe. Following is what their web page says about the show.

‘Bharati’ is a musical extravaganza, a delectable composite mix of the varied dances, music and folk traditions of India. Over the space of 90 minutes, the audience is guided through a brief but scintillating sampling of India’s rich and breath-taking diversity. Though just a glimpse, the selections hint at the hidden treasures of this vast and enchanting land; its regional, linguistic, historical and philosophical diversity; its myriad peoples, life-styles and traditions.

Due to continuous reinvention and renewal, these traditions appear to be in a state of constant flux. A taste of this infinite variety is offered in a show that is at once entertaining and intriguing. In making the selection, one of the guiding principles has been the search for elements with enduring appeal.

Music, dance and performance traditions have shaped the ‘collective consciousness’ of the Indian diaspora worldwide, and kept India alive in its collective imagination. Ingredients of popular culture have served as inspiration and link to Indian traditions and heritage. This show is at once a celebration of the vitality of these traditions and an invitation to sample and participate in their unique energy.

The namesake role of the show (Bharati) is done by Bhavna Pani from Orissa. Her introduction in their web page is as follows:

Bhavna was trained in the Odissi Classical dance school under Gurus Mahapatra and Attibudhi. Has won the All India Dance Competition and the Sringar Title (2001) by Sur Sringar Samsad. Danced at the Terrence Lewis Contemporary Dance Company and included performing in many stage productions Featured in films (Vettam, Yuvaraja, Tere Liye.) and TV Commercials.

Following are some youtube clips of the show.

Following are excerpts from an article in Times of India.

He mesmerized us with the pensive Main Jahan Rahoon in Namaste London, captured our hearts along with Himesh Reshammiya with Aap ki Kashish in Aashiq Banaya Aapne, shot to fame by bagging the Max Stardust Award 2008 for Maula Mere in Chak De and more recently he gave us the melodiously haunting Soniyo in Raaz 2.

The voice behind these soulful renditions is Krishna Beura, an Oriya guy who is probably the first from his state to offer his voice as a male playback singer in Bollywood.

…Krishna, who specializes in Sufi songs, has sung for more than 30 Bollywood flicks and also worked in Hollywood with famous American musician Jay Oliver for a song by Sandeep Chowta. Now, he is waiting for Sanjay Gupta’s Acid Factory.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph.

Gently slipping into its silver edition, Nandikar’s National Theatre Festival must receive a standing ovation for persevering annually over 25 years, providing Calcuttans the only sustained platform to see a wide spectrum of Indian theatre. Even if some invitees have proved substandard recently, even if the full houses caused by serpentine overnight queues in the past have vanished thanks to TV, the organizational achievement remains undiminished.

Almost without fail, at least one surprise every year has won us over. This time, Natya Chetana (from outside Bhubaneswar) did the trick with dramatist-director Subodh Pattanaik’s Mati in Oriya, though we might have expected it on the strength of their Katha in 2002. Among those few Indian troupes to live and work on a rural commune, Natya Chetana admirably pursues theatre for social development. Mati (both earth and mother) manages to connect all of India’s present woes, perhaps too causally, but nonetheless passionately. An American in top hat and stars-and-stripes (an unnecessarily simplistic demonization, the only flaw) sells hybrid seeds to farmers through politicians and middlemen; eventually yields suffer and the villagers are exploited, paving the way for Maoist intervention and violence. The grounds for the spread of insurrection are sympathetically delineated. The collective performs energetically (especially the main family, in the picture) and Pattanaik designs another trademark bamboo-and-cloth set, made exclusively of natural material.

Following is an excerpt from a news report in the Telegraph.

Painter Jatin Das’s dream of a museum for traditional and contemporary art in his native Orissa has gone international.

Das was in Washington and New York last week outlining his plans for the J.D. Centre of Art in Bhubaneswar to his American and Indian American fans.

At an interactive evening at the Indian embassy here, hosted by India’s deputy chief of mission Raminder Singh Jassal, with slides of his life’s work, Das said the proposed centre would be the first in India to display both traditional and contemporary art in 14 permanent galleries under one roof.

The Orissa government has allotted an acre of land to the painter, who was born in Mayurbhanj. B.V. Doshi, the famous architect from Ahmedabad and associate of Le Corbusier, has designed the master plan for the ambitious centre.

The painter said he had been dreaming of the project for almost a decade and expected that it would cost Rs 50 crore to make it a reality.

“I have been funding the centre, which has a board and a small staff of six people, with money from my paintings. They are temporarily working out of a house in Bhubaneswar given by the state government,” Das told this correspondent.

But he plans to make international requests for funding and hopes Indian Americans will join in the effort.

When the centre is ready, Das will donate his entire collection of 45 years, including paintings, books and antiquities, to the new venture to be housed in one place.

Some of the art can be seen in the pages: [8],[9],[10],[11] and [12].

Following is what a Telegraph report says about them.

The exhibition of artists from Orissa titled Dimensions & Directions that has opened at Mon Art Gallerie is a refreshing change from the cliched works displayed over and over again at most city galleries nowadays.

To begin with, these young artists have a more heightened awareness of the political situation in the state and also of the degradation of environment as the direct fallout of some political decisions. Some of the works may seem a trifle crude but nobody can doubt their effectiveness despite that shortcoming.

In Debarchan Rout’s canvas a man on a scaffolding is painting a wall green, while ironically greenery has been erased from the terrain beneath him in the name of development. The world map has turned into a black umbrella stopping acid rain from destroying a sapling in Rajiblochan Pani’s canvas.

Traders would once set out from Bali from the Orissa coast, but now the rivers have turned dry and sand is carted away from it. Huge factories come up in background. The entire scene in this work by Sovan Kumar is painted on a piece of tarpaulin.

Birendra Pani once again focuses on the young cross-dressing dancers of Orissa, this time folk style. In Rohit Supakar’s painting, a brand new car emerges from the trunk of an anthropomorphic tree, in an obvious reference to the resistance put up by local people against forcible appropriation of farmland by the government.

In Ramakrishna Behera’s wide-angle paintings of Ladakh, the dividing line between fact and fancy melt away. It must be mentioned that however well intentioned the installation on Ridley turtles may have been it ended up looking too obvious.