Summer translates to festival season and their variety keeps growing with every cycle of the calendar. From colossal neighborhood bashes featuring live bands and copious brew, to prestigious art fairs and tributes to ribs and hamburgers; every year their variety keeps magnifying.
Four years ago, Mandala South Asian Performing Arts launched its own festival to give the city a taste of the “vibrancy, flavor and color” of South Asia. Home to almost 2 billion people and encompassing nine countries with Afghanistan, India and Maldives among them, the depth of culture embedded in the region is immense. Acting as a small but glorious tip of the iceberg, the Mandala Makers Festival’s Artist Showcase placed those riches on proud display over the weekend in West Ridge’s Indian Boundary Park. Chiefly performed by descendants of South Asian immigrants to the United States, artistic purity and cultural fluidity were both generously represented. Not only did the festival offer beautiful renditions of traditional art forms in music and dance, it also revealed how those disciplines are absorbing and adapting to their new center of gravity. Seeing how these artistic expressions maintain their own identities while welcoming the influences and attributes of the United States makes the annual festival impressively ambitious and quietly extraordinary.
Both broad and refreshingly inclusive, the three-day showcase was dominated by a wide spectrum of dance. Performing under the trees Friday night, the Ishi Collective overlaid South Asian sensibilities onto dance expressions commonly found in western contemporary dance. Curious and completely engaged, the audience filling folding chairs and watching as the stood along the park’s walkway slipped into the hypnotic power of the ensemble’s performance. Often, when the unfamiliar and the beautiful collide, an element of fascination ensues. Toddlers, hipsters and octogenarians all seemed equally bewitched by the dance company’s sensory charms.
Whether they were DJ’s, stand-up comedians, instrumentalists, vocalists, or incredible solo dance artists like Ashwaty Chennat; each bore gifts the general population knew little of before the festival began. All cultures use the arts to express who they are or to tell stories unique to their lives and their heritage. And like South Asia, many are rooted in ritual and tradition dating back centuries. Catching glimpses into that past through the creative arts then becomes an adventure. Here, it helped make P.M. Tummala’s presentation especially rewarding. Inserting vintage footage of an elaborate and solemn Indian wedding ceremony into a filmed dreamscape made contemplative reflection inescapable. Consciously transportive, the film was backed by ethereal electronica and Krissy Bergmark on tabla to amplify its impact. An unexpected immersion into another world, the performance was typical of the festival’s lush texture. Immediately following, a radically different entertainment reality was in store just a short walk from the field house to the park’s Nature Play Area.
Expansive in her worldview, Radia Ali combined elements of various cultures to create her festival offering that also centered on dance. Drawing from the full breath of her travels and her wide dance expertise, Ali crafted a singularly memorable set. Joined Saturday night by Egyptian indie artist NAXO, her self-proclaimed “trippy” show focused on the notion of transcendence and the imperatives of self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-affirmation. Through his splendid vocals, NAXO contributed the haunting sounds of antiquity that Ali used to propel and guide her dances. Dances that conjured up the spirit of millennia and radiated life. Alternately using silk veils and fire fans as props, the magic she wove through gesture and swirls made stunning spectacle while subtly probing the psyche.
Emerging from the confines of Covid and still young, the festival is still getting its legs. Smoother and more seamless will eventually come. The quality and value of the art being profiled already stand very high, making the festival’s Artist Showcase the cultural success it was designed to be. A boon to anyone who takes pleasure in and has an appreciation for the full scope of artistic expression, the Mandala Makers Festival stands as an unqualified treasure. One that adds robust strength and beauty to the tapestry of the city.
Mandala Makers Festival
Artist Showcase
June 24 – 26, 2022
Indian Boundary Park Cultural Center
2500 W. Lunt Avenue
Chicago, IL
