The India Association of Greater Boston celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of India’s Republic Day at the Burlington High School in Burlington, MA on Jan 24, 2009.  As usual the event attracted large crowds who gathered to watch the talent showcase presented by local artists.

The event opened with a prayer by Deodatta Shenoi ,  welcome address by President Rita Shah and the singing of the US and Indian national anthems by Kumkum Dilwali and Shuchita Rao. Rajiv Laroia and Neha Shah served as MCEEs for the evening.  

In the IAGB tradition the talent showcase opened with a music segment.  The segment opened with Mahalakshmi Ashtakam by Sandhya Bommaraju’s group followed by several wonderful patriotic vocal presentations coordinated by Sangarika Kanjilal, Shuchita Rao, Preeti Nagar, Shika Bajpai and Kruthi Thakkar.   There was a Carnatic violin presentation by students of Tara Anand which was wonderful. The grand finale for the music segment was the presentation of the song Halla Bol set to live orchestra with nearly 20 instruments by the student run orchestra at Phillips Academy under the direction of Arun Saigal. It was wonderful to see a group that was made up of diverse national origins sing and play this powerful piece orchestrated and conducted by Andi Zhou and sung by Faiyad Ahmad. It was hard to believe that these were all high school students. The Halla Bol was a perfect touch to the event that was dedicated to the victims of the Mumbai Terror attacks.

The music segment was followed by a wonderful speech given by Dr. Balram Singh, director of the Indic center who was the chief guest for the evening.
Following the speech presentations choreographed by Nilam Mistry . Pooja Adesara . Varisha Parikh . Chirag Shah, Srujana Nekkanti, Debobratha Ghosh, Pallavi Mishra, Shalini Yerabothu, Ritu Garg, Monisha Prakash, Tica, Sindhu, & Shalini had young children dancing to a wide variety of Bollywood numbers.

Then came the special invited presentation of the evening – a classical dance showcase by all the Bharatanatyam dance teachers in the area. They presented a dance (Devaki Nandana) depicting the ten avatars of Vishnu. It was a presentation that brought out the beauty of the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam many a youngster left inspired to learn this ancient art form. This was the highlight of the evening’s presentation.

Following this, there were presentations choreographed by Neena Gulati,Supriya Puranik ,Ranjani Saigal ,Sheethal Dwaraka
,Shobha Hiremath ,Jasmine Shah ,Samidha Sane, Supriya Bhat ,Neela Jangi,Sunita Malhotra,Monisha Prakash,Monisha Rajinikanth, Netra Rajinikanth,Dr Shailesh Upreti,Seema Bisht ,Pooja Adesara, Maya Dave,Priya Jani,Nilam Mistry,Nikita Nadkarni,Priyanka Nawathe . Varisha Parikha,Aayushi Patel,Anisha Patel,Shireen Patel,Tina Shah, Ekta Saksena ,Veena Teli ,Amulya Deepak Vrunda Dhole, Sharada Gupta,Janavi Kharidia,Teja Nadakarni,Nihita Patel, Yogi Patel , Anju Pathak ,Hema Patel,Rukhi Patel,Uma Patel,Malti Shastry Sharayu Mahale and Yashoda Dhole.

The dances in this segment were set to different genres of music and were drawn from different geographical areas which made for a very colorful presentation.

Overall the quality of the program was excellent.  The items very unique and had a touch of class to them .The large number of people who came to the event made crowd management a challenge. Perhaps IAGB should seek a larger venue for their event.  

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