Unity Through Diversity: Shakti Caravan, India 2023
Reflections from Livia Vanaver
In the 70's and 80's The Vanaver Caravan toured for the US State Department as Cultural Ambassadors of Good Will. Over the years, we continued to do this representing New York State and Ulster County. Truly, we are still doing that wherever we go. I have always been drawn to India and never imagined how it would affect me and broaden the work of The Vanaver Caravan until we began in 2011. Every time we have visited India, I never know what to expect . . . but I do know that something unexpected and miraculous will happen every day. This was our 4th time working with the Aikiyam faculty and students grades 1-8. For 2023, they asked us to create something special for the whole school to celebrate Republic Day . The theme this year was Unity Through Diversity.
In January, we worked with the faculty and 200 children from the Aikiyam School, one of Auroville's seven schools, which serves the village of Kuyilapaliam, bordering Auroville in Tamil Nadu. We chose eight countries that represent the peoples and cultures who reside in, and helped to build, Auroville. Created by Sri Aurobindo and his main disciple, known as The Mother, Auroville is an idealistic community with a vision to model global unity. West Africa, Germany, Brazil, Italy, France, China, South Africa and the USA were the cultures of choice. Each class/grade level studied and portrayed these countries through dance, music, song, and history.
One of the highlights for all of us was working with the teachers and having them perform dances from Greece and Israel. After the school day (and after chai and unwinding together), we rehearsed. The teachers were received like rock stars by the entire student body. You should have heard the audience cheering! The crumbling theater on the property next door to Aikiyam was renovated, and refurbished to accommodate this event and the whole school performed and shared their dances and all that they learned. Hopefully the space will now serve as a lovely performance area for future events.
You may know that every Thursday morning since April 2020, a month after the Covid lockdown in India, we began weekly world dance classes with the students at Malarchi home, the boarding house for Aikiyam and the high school. When it's 6:30 AM here, it's 5:00 PM there: a perfect time to Dance for Joy (their title for the class). That class still continues remotely today. Bharat Verma (an amazing dancer and body percussionist whom we met 11 years ago when the Company first went to Udaipur, India to work in the schools there) is currently teaching Rajasthani folk dance, Bollywood and body percussion to the students. We are all so happy to see each other on Zoom every week to dance. Last week we were ALL thrilled to dance together in person for the first time in 3 years!
Jill Ann Schwartz and I were the Teaching Artists. Chelsea Needham and Bill were the musicians extraordinaire. Jonah Grossman and Kyan Malone, two of our Youth Company, assisted in teaching these dances to the entire school, and they had the time of their lives. We all performed together at SAWCHU in front of their main theatre, Bharat Nivas, which brought people from throughout the Auroville communities together for the concert and participatory dancing. It was a true celebration of global connection and continuing to build community, in the way Auroville was intended. Big shout out to Laura Stotz and Marc Grossman, the two VanaParents on board for this tour, documenting and supporting the experience.
