Blurring boundaries

Now in its 10th year, the Serendipity Festival has broadened the arts landscape by getting top talent to collaborate across genres and making art easier to understand

- Avantika Bhuyan

A small clearing within the lush environs of a park located along the Mandovi riverfront in Panaji featured a wooden structure with steps running along one side and clay pots scattered across the floor.

As the audience took its place on the three sides of this enclosure, Vidya Thirunarayan, dressed in a dhoti, embarked on a performance that brought together dance, text, original sound and ceramics. Directed by UK-based Tim Supple and based on the stories of three women—Parvati, Meena and Thirunarayan herself—Lives of Clay wove in myth and reality. The artist moulded and remoulded pots from a heap of clay, making this act of creation an integral part of the performance.

Part of the interdisciplinary Serendipity Arts Festival in December 2023, Lives of Clay left the audience with a host of questions: Was this theatre? Or dance? Or a ceramics showcase? Did it really matter what genre it subscribed or didn't subscribe to?

Another performance in 2023 that compelled similar questions was Kahaniyon ka Manthan, which took place within the Old GMC Complex. This storytelling project, curated by Mayuri Upadhya, brought together the Rajasthani kavad katha with Mohiniyattam from Kerala. Theatre practitioner Akhshay Gandhi and dancer-choreographer Divya Warier brought to life metaphorical stories around the seven manthans, or churnings—including emotional, social and philosophical—about what it means to be human. Kahaniyon ka Manthan also tried to break the boundaries between classical and folk, traditional and contemporary.