Rushed opening ceremony at the Mylapore Fine Arts

A couple of sabhas had their inauguration today. The major ones are The Mylapore Fine Arts Club and Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, apart from Mudhra and Sruthilaya.

A main sponsor and arts patron had to be present in more than one venue.
The result is the hurried inaugural evening at The Mylapore Fine Arts Club.

The audience were slowly coming in and warming up inside the auditorium, but by then the awards were given away and the chief guest had left the venue.

But the felicitation by Cleveland Sundaram for the doyen M.S.Gopalakrishnan, who received the Sangeetha Kala Nipuna, brought back the memories of yesteryear concerts by MSG and his accompanists. He expressed awe in how could a 10 seconds' time have a lot of intricate swaras for MSG as though it was an hours' time!

Senior dancer Sudharani Raghupathy felicitated Rhadha, this year's Nrithya Kala Nipuna awardee. She recalled that both the dancers' bio-data used to be the same with the performances and venues they both performed in their prime days.

The highlight of the inaugural ceremony was the prize distribution to the various contests the sabha hosts during the 'season'.

The prestigious Tambura prizes for Thyagaraja krits and Purandaradasa kritis in the seniors category were bagged by two young girls V. Vatsala and Aarti Ananthakrishnan.
Vatsala (seen on the left in the picture) is the disciple of vidwan O.S.Thiagarajan and Aarti's guru is vidushi Seetha Rajan.

The Mylapore Fine Arts Club hosts the music festival till Jan. 2, 2011 and thereafter a dance festival till Jan. 16, 2011.

The complete schedule of concerts are here - http://www.chennaidecemberseason.com/2010/11/mylapore-fine-arts-club-2010.html