On January 25, 2023, the Khaitan School NOIDA held its first-ever “Music and Dance Festival,” entitled “Euphoria.”
This performance celebrated the “Confluence” of music and dance by showcasing numerous dance and music styles that seamlessly came together on one platform..
Goals Of The Festival-
- The programme was designed to provide kids with a stage on which to display their abilities in front of their professors, peers, and families.
- The programme allowed each participant the chance to learn how to work as a group/chorus to perform a dance/song, which would help them develop important qualities like discipline, organisation, and teamwork.
Around 150 students participated in the programme across all of the sequences. It featured a number of performances in several categories, including various Indian vocal and dance acts and pop music from the west. This programme was designed to be the pinnacle of all the learning that the participating kids had accomplished in their classrooms while demonstrating the “Process Based Learning” methodology that our school adheres to and supports.
The programme started with the principal, Ms. Rina Singh, lighting the lamp, accompanied by Mr. Sajeev Philip, Ms. Pooja Singh, and Ms. Seema Khurana, as the first choir of the day performed “Harivarasanam and Madhava Mamava,” a combination of the divine song “Harivarasanam,” or Hari Haratmaka Ashtakam, that is recited just before the closing of the temple doors at night as well as Madhava Mamava, a classic carnatic hymns sung as a prayer to Lord Krishna.
The day’s comperes introduced “RHAPSODY,” the first part of the programme, following the lighting of the lamp.
The ‘evolution of pop music’ was the focus of this year’s “Rhapsody” subject for western music. The Western Choir and Rock Band led the audience on a journey that began with the most famous and iconic performer of all time, “ELVIS PRESLEY,” and followed the development of pop music over the course of the last seven decades, featuring artists like the Beatles, Queen, Abba, Michael Jackson, Bryan Adams, and the more contemporary Taylor Swift, One Direction, and Ed Sheeran, among others. The rock group also got the crowd to sing along with them and do the famous STOMP STOMP CLAP dance move from the famous Queen song ‘We Will Rock You’.
The program’s second half, which featured a fusion of different traditional and modern dance and music genres as well as Hindustani classical music, was dubbed “Kalaangan.” Several dance and musical sequences were featured in this performance, with themes including “Sangita-Ratnakara,” which translates as “Ocean of Music and Dance” and is one of the most significant Indian musicological texts; “Shiv Mallari,” a Bharatnatyam dance choreography for welcoming Lord Shiva’s procession with dancers singing his praise; and “Abhinaya,” one of the chapters from “Natyashastra” that is further divided into 4 types: Aangika, Vachika, Aharya and Satvika Abhinaya and ‘Bhakti Rasa’.
The above-mentioned themes were musically represented by the Indian choir, and the dance groups captured the dance elements.
Every member of the audience liked the energetic, charismatic performances, as was clear from the standing ovations each performer received at the conclusion of their presentations.
All the students from all the sequences came together to perform “Jagao Mere Des Ko,” one of the most exquisitely written contemporary patriotic songs, that Sir AR Rahman composed, as the event’s grand finale. The National Anthem was played after a brief word of appreciation from the principal and a vote of thanks from Mr. Sajeev Philip.
