Eidgah
Eidgah is a charming story set during the Muslim festival of Eid, showing the empathy of an orphan, Hamid, towards his grandmother.
RCP partnered with The Culture Tree on Eidgah. The Culture Tree promotes cultural literacy about South Asia through language and educational & cultural programs
The storyteller's bag of tools
The Storyteller's Toolkit
The techniques an Indian classical dancer uses to create an emotional mood are grouped under the term "saatvika abhinaya" (SAAT-vika ab-in-EYE-a). In particular, the face is a key tool for communicating emotion—Indian dancers train for years to perfect these expressions!
Watch how Preeti manipulates different aspects of facial expression (eyes, lips, eyebrows) to create the emotional effect.
(Note: These videos do not have voiceover/subtitles.)
Every culture uses its hand gestures for expression: in bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance) these gestures are classified in minute detail. Each gesture has specific meanings and applications. Each video includes the name of different facial expressions, or "saatvika abhinaya," and hand gestures, or "mudras" in Sanskrit (the classical language of India) along with examples and applications.
Commentary & Analysis
In the video below Preeti demonstrates how she uses the classical gestural vocabulary of Indian dance to tell the story.