What's New

See calendar for events, performances and workshops.

FIPA’s new outdoor stilts dance production of the Aranya and Kishkindha Kandas, from the Ramayana, is currently touring festivals all round the UK. The performance is a daring and radical development for the company. Emerging out of a Cosmic Chorus, episodes from the Ramayana will be dramatically evoked. Dancing in their usual stunning style on stilts, the performers will also conjure up an arresting landscape of haunting music and vocals. The production is supported by Arts Council England's Escalator fund,

FIPA is also very pleased to be part of the first Gong Festival in the UK this summer. A week long course of workshops with school children from Newcastle and youth from Jack Drum Arts in Durham in gamelan, stilts and costume making, will culminate in our artists leading participants in an inspirational public performance of Ramayana at Baltic Square in Gateshead on 16th July. The Gong Festival receives gracious support from the Indonesian Embassy and is in partnership with SEA Arts.

Watch out also for A Walking Garden, another new outdoor stilts production, inspired by William Morris’s Peacock Carpet, which has a host of animal and flower characters led by a resplendent peacock and lotus. In partnership with Arts in Education Network, River Cultures, and funded by Arts Council, England, the project includes school children from Waltham Forest and performing arts students at Leyton Sixth Form College. These performances will take place in festival events in the London borough of Waltham Forest this year.

British Arangetrams oral history online resource, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund is now available in this website, on our youtube channel FIPAarts, www.youtube.com/user/fipaarts, and at www.pulseconnects.com. There will be an exhibition from 9th September at Kala Sangam in Braford. The resource is an intriguing collection of memories and experiences of thirty-five UK Bharatanatyam dancers who have done their arangetrams. These unedited interviews by nine gurus and their students offer viewers a wonderful opportunity to hear these stories unfold in their entirety. British Arangetrams workshops are currently being delivered in schools in the East region.