Week 12 - The Spiritual Endeavor

Week 11 - Acceptance of Mortality

Week 10 - Do victors define history?

Week 9 - Compassion

Week 8 - Action and Motivation

Hold a true friend with both your hands. Nigerian proverb

Shared laughter, comforting touch, strengthening grip, shoulder to cry on... friendship is the language of the heart, a communion of souls. It is the foundation of all relationships, sustaining every human being through the smiles and tears of life.

Produced and presented by the Kalapriya Centre for the Performing Arts, Chicago, MITRA, A CELEBRATION OF FRIENDSHIP, showcases the many facets of the theme from carefree childhood to the care-laden years.

Kalapriya brings together artists from Chicago and India to create this multi-genre production blending theatre, dance, music and poetry.

Directed by Gowri Ramnarayan, the show will feature Chicago dancers Devika Dhir, regular performer at Kalapriya and Bhavya Kumaran, of the Nrithya Sangeeth Academy in Naperville.

Kalapriya and Columbia College Chicago launch their first collaboration at the Sherwood Recital Hall on Michigan Ave in the South Loop.

Join us to celebrate the iconic singer Lata Mangeshkar whose music dominated South Asia for most of the 20th century!

Dr. Shastri Swaminathan will narrate the story of her life through the decades and present the specially curated playlist created in 2019 to commemorate her ninetieth birthday. Chicagoland singers, Ms. Tara Swaminathan, Ms. Hera Mobashir and Ms. Amira Mohammed will sing the songs accompanied by Puranlal Vyas on Tabla and Mahavir Upadhyay on keyboard. 

Born in 1929 and performing from the tender age of 9, Lata Mangeshkar’s career spanned over eight decades! She sang in over 36 languages and created countless recordings. In 1974, the Guinness Book of Records stated that she had already recorded more than 25,000 solos, duets and chorus backed songs! 

The Sherwood Recital Hall at Columbia College Chicago is located at 1312 S. Michigan Ave. The show will begin at 6pm. General admission tickets are $15, Columbia College students and faculty can attend for free! 

Reserve your tickets now! 

Join us for a conversation about what it means to answer the question, "Are you Indian?" if you were not born in India.

About this event

Although this program is free to the public, Kalapriya is a non-profit that relies on the generous donations of our supporters to provide the high quality programming you enjoy. If you can, please support us by purchasing a Donation Ticket. Thank you!

This discussion, facilitated by Dr. Ritu Radhakrishnan, will feature Chicago-based, Indian American authors, Sonali Dev and Anuradha D. Rajurkar. These authors will engage in a conversation about how their experiences of being an Indian American have influenced their writing. Audience members will have an opportunity to hear excerpts from the authors' books and participate in a question and answer session

Sonali Dev - USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style love stories that explore universal issues. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, and Kirkus. She has won numerous accolades, including the American Library Association’s award for best romance, the RT Reviewer Choice Award for best contemporary romance, multiple RT Seals of Excellence, has been a RITA® finalist, and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. Shelf Awareness calls her “Not only one of the best but one of the bravest romance novelists working today.”

She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog.

Anuradha D. Rajurkar is the national recipient of the SCBWI Emerging Voices Award for her contemporary debut novel, American Betiya. Born and raised in the Chicago area to Indian immigrant parents, Anuradha earned two degrees from Northwestern University, and for many years had the joy of being a public-school teacher by day, writer by night. Nowadays, when she’s not writing or reading, you can find Anuradha exploring the shores of Lake Michigan with her family, obsessing over her garden, watching old horror flicks with her sons, eating too many baked yummies, or roguishly knitting sweaters without their patterns.

Dr. Radhakrishnan is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, and is a member of Kalapriya's Cultural Sundays Advisory Panel.

We are striving to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. Please be aware that our efforts are ongoing. For questions about accessibility or to request an accommodation, please contact mordion@kalapriya.org or call 312-436-2789. Requests should be made at as early as possible.

An ancient poetic text with more than 74,000 verses, the Mahabharata is the longest epic poem ever written, roughly 10 times the length of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey combined. Scholars from around the world have compared in importance to the Bible, Quran, & ancient works of Greek literature.

Join us for this presentation. Interested scholars will be invited to a new twelve-part reading & discussion series to this ancient Hindu "tale within a tale".

Although this program is free to the public, Kalapriya is a non-profit that relies on the generous donations of our supporters to provide the high-quality programming you enjoy. If you can, please support us by purchasing a Donation Ticket. Thank you!

About this event

Suggested Donation $15 (To donate, simply purchase a donation ticket instead of a free ticket).

Your donations will help us continue to bring high-quality programming to you through our Cultural Sundays series.

Reinterpreting an episode from the Mahabarhata, Chennai-based Gowri Ramnarayan presents When Things Fall Apart, a tale of lost souls from the Mahabharata. The story focuses on three characters — Dronacharya or Drona, Ashwathama, and Kripi.

What differentiates this play from the regular episodes of Mahabharata, Gowri explains, is that “The play is divided into four scenes, and we all know about Drona, that he was the great mentor. However, my play questions his actions and thoughts. Why does he take the side of Duryodhana? Apart from that, Ashwathama, his son, who was also fond of the Pandavas, winds up on Duryodhana’s side. There is something unclear about the father-son duo and also, there is nothing much mentioned about his wife, Kripi. There is just a routine reference or two about her. This gave me an opportunity to create a new character.”

We are striving to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. Please be aware that our efforts are ongoing. For questions about accessibility or to request an accommodation, please contact mordion@kalapriya.org or call 312-436-2789. Requests should be made at as early as possible.

Bhimbetka is an archeological site in central India that spans the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. They provide a rare glimpse into a human settlement and the cultural evolution and expressions of prehistoric spirituality.

From 10:30 - 11:00 am, Dr. Ritu Radhakrishnan will make the art accessible to children ages 5-12, bringing them the joy of this art!

The main program, to be presented by Dr. Gowri Ramnarayan, will begin at 11:10 am.

Suggested Donation $15 (To donate, simply purchase a donation ticket instead of a free ticket).

Your donations will help us continue to bring high-quality programming to you through our Cultural Sundays series.

About this event

Dr. Bertie Kibreah is a scholar. An ethnomusicologist who studies the evolution of musical styles as people live and move in the region. As an Indian American born to Bengali immigrants, his heart and his research of Bengal is unique.

In this presentation, his examples are drawn from the boyati traditions of Bengal which might shine light on why the region has absorbed so many religions and made them uniquely their own.

The interaction of Muslim/Hindu saint figures in Bengali folk performance, the religious shrines as spaces where ideas are contested and explored and how the cultural geography of Bengal is immensely complex having been partitioned three times in the span of less than seven decades.

You will listen to our own Dr. Kibreah to learn and be moved by the influences of politics and religion on the music and musicians of South Asia as the folk musicians with deep devotion seek a higher power for answers to their very local intractable problems.

We are striving to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. Please be aware that our efforts are ongoing. For questions about accessibility or to request an accommodation, please contact mordion@kalapriya.org or call 312-436-2789. Requests should be made at as early as possible.

Good Trouble tells the story of John Lewis, the celebrated Civil Rights Movement organizer and spiritual leader, and how he fought to make a beloved community where everyone is unconditionally loved and accepted. Diving into the activists who influenced Lewis on his journey (Mahatma Gandhi, James Lawson, Martin Luther King), as well as activists who built on the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement to advocate for other marginalized groups (Cesar Chavez, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera) Good Trouble will teach a history that is seldom celebrated to inspire folks to get into good trouble—and change the world.

We are striving to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. Please be aware that our efforts are ongoing. For questions about accessibility or to request an accommodation, please contact mordion@kalapriya.org or call 312-436-2789. Requests should be made at as early as possible.

About this event

Sonam Kalra will be joining us.

Ms. Kalra will recite and sing Sufi poetry and provide translations, explanations & context for her works.

Suggested Donation $15

Kalapriya Academy - Summer Dance Showcase

The Kalapriya Academy provides classical dance training in the style called Bharatanatyam. Bharatanatyam is recognized as one of India’s most rigorous and advanced classical dance forms. Kalapriya’s artistic director, Ahila Vigneswaran, is an accomplished and highly trained dance instructor of Bharatanatyam in India and she has brought the same academic focus to the classes she teaches in the USA. While she provides a theoretical base for her classes, she is open to accept all who wish to learn and places them at the appropriate level based on their skills.

Suggested Donation $15

We are striving to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. Please be aware that our efforts are ongoing. For questions about accessibility or to request an accommodation, please contact mordion@kalapriya.org or call 312-436-2789. Requests should be made at least two weeks prior to the event.

Kalapriya Cultural Sundays - Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray

About this Event

THE VISIONARIES: Three Indian Filmmakers with global relevance

A conversation between Dr. Kunal Sen and Dr. Gowri Ramnarayan about Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray and their work.

Dr. Kunal Sen grew up in a cultural milieu in Calcutta. His father, Mrinal Sen was a filmmaker, and his mother Gita Sen a stage and film actress. However his interest drifted towards science. After obtaining a graduate degree in Physics, he switched to Computer Science and obtained his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from University of Illinois in Chicago. After working in a medical research lab for a few years, he joined Encyclopaedia Britannica and served as its Chief Technology Officer for the next twenty years. Currently, he is the Head of Technology at Morningstar, a global financial research company. For the last ten years Kunal has also established himself as a visual artist, working in various media including electronic kinetic art. He is also the author of a number of text books in basic computer science.

Dr. Gowri Ramnarayan is a playwright, theatre director, journalist (The Hindu, 23 years, now freelance), vocal accompanist to legendary Carnatic musician M S Subbulakshmi, and founder/artistic director, JustUs Repertory. Her witty, thought-provoking, visually interesting plays make original use of poetry, music, dance and painting and present a rare amalgam of aesthetics and scholarship. She has authored books - Abu’s World (HarperCollins), Past Forward (OUP), Dark Horse and Other Plays (Wordcraft), translated eminent Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar’s plays, and served as Fipresci Jury member at international film festivals in India and Europe. She is Chairperson, Rukmini Devi Arundale Trust; Senior Associate, Sruti magazine; member, Regional Advisory Committee, Indian Council for Cultural Relations; and guest faculty, Asian College of Journalism.

Sunday May 16, 2021 at 11 am

Suggested Donation $15

Full event recording below:

Introduction to the Classical Dance Styles of South Asia

Coming to you in April is a professional demonstration and discussion of four major classical dance forms of India.

Bharatanatyam, the oldest classical dance form, originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu in South India

Kathak is traditionally attributed to the traveling bards of ancient northern India known as Kathakars or storytellers.

Odissi is also an ancient Indian classical dance that originated in the temples of the eastern coastal state of Orissa.

Kuchipudi originated in a village named Kuchipudi in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Suggested Donation $15