Event: 'Dilnawaz': Residency and Theatrical Production
Place: Bangladesh National Museum
Date : May 1 - June 29, 2018

Time: 1st and 2nd May(10:00 AM - 4:00 PM); 3rd May to 20th June(1:00 PM - 4:00 PM); 29th June(6:30 PM - 9:00 PM)

Shadhona and Sashar Zarif are engaged in a creative project called Dilnawaz. The project was inspired by a profound short story by Rahat Ara Bagum. A pioneer female Urdu writer of early 20 century Calcuta, Rahat Ara Begum, was a prolific Urdu writer of the 40s.

Sashar Zarif will be sharing his over 25 years of creation, eduction and fieldwork/research mainly Sufi and Shamanic dance practices, Dance of Mugham and his ethno-choreographic approach in contemporary dance making with Shadhona. Shadhona (www.shadhona.org) will share its years of training and creation and the wealth of history and tradition embedded in their practice with Sashar Zarif (http://www.sasharddance.com/). The project hopes to draw together two great traditions of performative thought, the Sufi, Central and West Asian doctrine, and the Baul doctrine, of the wandering minstrels of Bengal.

"Dilnawaz is a term in Sufi mysticism. This term like many other mystical terms is very hard to translate in few words. Dil means heart, the centre of our breath and our presence in this life. Nawaz can means caress. Therefore the word Dilnawaz refers to a person /a voice / a movement that caresses the heart. Dance is Dilnawaz, a dancer can be Dilnawaz.

OBJECTIVES: • Bring together two great performative traditions of belief, which have a long history of dialogue with each other: the Sufi tenet and the rustic folk belief system of the Bauls of Bengal. • Enhance each other’s practices through exchange and negotiation. • Apply this inspirational meeting of two creative forms of dance practice within a dance production based on an Urdu story ‘Dilnawaz’ by Rahat Ara Begum, a writer from the 1920s in Calcutta, India.

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