SAIIER 2016:Mira Cultural Group

Millidacious		Orientation to Auroville workshop
Mira Cultural Group

Introduction

Entity::Mira Cultural Group offered classes in Indian classical dance, classical vocal music, playing the Veena instrument, and folk dance.

Activities of the year

The classes happened on Saturdays at the SAWCHU Building at Bharat Nivas.

Dance: There are in all 21 children who learned basic Bharatnatiyam and six advanced children who went through two programs. The children learning classical dance were ready to perform on Tamil New Year 2015 and on International Woman's Day, March 8th. The children presented the dance performance with hearts full of joy, dressed up in colourful costumes and jewels. The audience clapped encouragingly and appreciated their talent. The dance performance photos were published on Auronet.

Carnatic vocal music: Two Carnatic music classes were offered: one for the ladies and another for the children. 31 children participated and 7 ladies. Some children (3 years to 5 years old, and one special care child) were too young and could not sit more than 15 minutes, so these children came only two or three months. The women and children learned Carnatic songs about different gods, like Shiva, Ganesha, and Krishna, and about The Mother. They happily sang in their puja place and Saraswati Puja time. They also performed in the Auroville Singing Festival. The Bharata Matha songs included one kid dressed up as Bharata Matha. One child sang eight songs at the Kuilapalayam temple festival; the villagers asked her “where did you learn all these devotional songs?” and she proudly told them “in Auroville and Mira Cultural Group!”

Veena: Earlier in the year there were several Veena students, but now only two have time to continue with the classes.

Folk dance: Folk dance was included in the summer program in 2015. Ten children were interested to learn folk and contemporary dance. A few months ago six girls stopped, because they were too busy with other extracurricular activities. The women discontinued because of their work load after the summer program, but classes continue for the children. They performed for 2 hours in the International Women's Day festival.

Outcomes

17 Auroville children, 14 bioregion children, 5 Auroville ladies, 2 bioregion ladies, and 1 Auroville special care child benefited from these classes and gave numerous performances (see above).

Reflections

When the children get bored in class they frankly tell the teacher to give a break. They go for play 5 minutes, then they come happily back to attend the class.

When we plan for a performance, extra classes are scheduled. But the children are five days fully occupied with school and sports, and we cannot push them to keep too many hours – they would be physically and mentally tired and unable to concentrate.

Students must contribute at least Rs. 50 to 150 monthly. Some children (who have no father or mother) who would like to learn could not pay for the class – still we always add them to the group list. The experienced teachers always calculate the payment according to the number of students but we ask the teacher to calculate for the whole group. The student contribution is used for their music books, stationery items, gifts, snacks and costumes when they perform programs.

We face difficulty to get a teacher who has special ability to teach something well without calculating the number of students and the duration of the class. We have only limited funds and according to that we must organize the project. Teachers who have just finished college are the ones who ask reasonable payment, but experienced teachers always expect more money and to teach fewer hours. The education level is different in outside schools – the same spirit does not work when the teacher teaches to Auroville children in free progress classes. We would be happy to find teachers who work out of love for the subject and the students and not primarily for money. It would be perfect if the teachers were connected to Auroville or the Ashram.

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