Tuesdays at Curley's

Welcome to PoemAlley, Stamford, Connecticut's eclectic venue for poets, poetry reading and discussion! Open to anyone living in Fairfield County and the surrounding area, we meet Tuesday nights at 7:30 pm at Curley's Diner on 62 Park Place (behind Target) . Come contribute, get something to eat, or simply listen!



Jul 22, 2014

Dances OF Fire, Flames Of Hope

Eighteen-year-old spoken-word artist and accomplished Bharatanatyan dancer Shreekari Tadepalli will share her work and insights this evening at Curley’s regarding her writing, performances and involvement with the Bhumi Project, an environmental initiative of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (a partner with the United Nations Development Programme).

Charting a nine-year course of social and spiritual action to reignite an over-urbanized humanity’s neglected bond with the Earth and its ecological support system, the five-year-old Project is specifically geared to inspiring, informing, and connecting young Hindus interested in stewardship of the planet and is named after Bhumi devi, the female personification of Earth acclaimed in various Vedic texts. Find out more at www.bhumiproject.org; a PDF document of the program can be found here.

Shreekari’s twelve years' experience studying Bharatanatyan reflects this Gaiaist symbiosis via its symbolic celebration of the eternal universe through that of the grace of the body. The narratives of most solo performances embody switching between numerous characters delineated by Carnatic classical music, movement and expression. Click here to enjoy a sampling of Shreekari’s intricate performances from her "Arts Supplement" Youtube channel (including an original interpretation of “Amazing Grace”). Below is a performance from 2010:




A classical dance form of South India going back more than 2,000 years, believed to have originated in Thanjavoor of Tamil Nadu and structured around a complex range of Adavu (steps), Hasthamudra (hand gestures) and  Bhavabhinaya (facial expressions), Bharatanatyam is a mystical reflection of fire in the human body, with four other dance styles, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Mohiniattam and Kathakali corresponding, respectively, with water, earth, air and aether.

Just back from India (where she volunteered in a hospital setting in Hyderabad) and the UK, Shreekari plans to pursue undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr College in the fall.

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