Munmun Ahmed and her visual poetry of Kathak

Renowned Kathak artiste Munmun Ahmed and her students of Rewaz Performers' School are all set to showcase their performance on the fourth night (November 27) of the fifth Bengal Classical Music Festival 2016. The Bangladeshi diva is hoped to set off the night's performance through displaying her visual poetry or dance. For the best display of their Kathak production, Munmun Ahmed has been directing rehearsal for the last three months at the Daily Star-Bengal Arts Precinct. This correspondent caught up with Munmun Ahmed who has earned fame both at home and abroad performing on stage. Excerpts: 

 “First of all I am so delighted that I, along with my students, am going to perform in such a grand scale classical music festival. My accomplished students, who are learning under my tutelage for 12 to 18 years, will accompany me. I hope to showcase my solo dance recitals together with group performances with them and they will also perform in separate performance segments so that they can get the exposure of the big stage individually. Renowned Indian musicians -- Sunanda Mukherjee, a student of Amjad Ali Khan, will play Sarod and Subir Thakur will play Tabla with us. Along with them, Bangladeshi artistes Asit Biswas on esraj and Moniruzzaman on flute will accompany us. Tanjina Karim Swaralipi will render thumri with our live performances.”

 “It is a complete Kathak production, where I have planned to incorporate the abhinaya ang with my performance. The connotation of romance between Radha and Krishna has been depicted in the featured thumri 'Mori gagariya kahe ko phori'. Parimita, Aporajita, Aishwarya, Uzma, Anisha, Reesha, Sharmishtha, Avantika, Maahima, Shamim, Paridhi, Nandini, Shishir, Maisha, Masum, Scally, Nusrat, Shoma, Rupakalpa and Tanisha will take part in the production.”

“My Bangladeshi audience has an expectation from me as I am leading my troupe at the festival. I want blessings from all. The dance artistes who are going to perform with me are my students, except Fifa Chakma and Asha Hossain. I have made them learn every aspects of Kathak. It's going to be a proud moment for me to be sharing the prestigious stage with them.”