Arts of India Festival Community Day

Penn Live Arts is hosting the Arts of India Festival Community Day at the Annenberg Center on Sunday, November 1, from 1 PM to 4 PM. It's a free afternoon of Indian dance, music, crafts and food, and it's part of a larger festival that Penn Live Arts is putting on in partnership with Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society of Philadelphia. This particular edition marks Sruti's 40th anniversary and fits into the Penn Live Arts 26/27 season, Belonging, which looks at artists as both keepers and makers of heritage.

The day is built around three performances. At 1:30 PM, the Nardhana Academy of Dance presents Nritya Rang, a Bharatanatyam performance in the Prince Theatre. At 2:30 PM, Penn Sargam plays in the Feintuch Family Lobby, followed at 3 PM by a percussion demonstration from Pitchumani Sivakumar, Ravi Kyer and Swetha Narasimhan, also in the lobby. The mridangam and ghatam they'll be demonstrating are instruments with lineages that go back more than 1,500 years.

Between the sets, there's mehendi body art, Indian treats and conversations about the ongoing impact of these traditions. The Community Day is the participatory side of a wider festival that opens with a sold-out performance by Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna and a symposium on sound and music in South India, and runs alongside residencies by banjoist Béla Fleck and choreographer John Scott, all leading up to Diwali. The whole thing is supported by the William Penn Foundation.

It's free, though registration is requested. The performances run from 1:30 PM to 3 PM across the Prince Theatre and the Feintuch Family Lobby, and the whole day goes from 1 PM to 4 PM at the Annenberg Center on the University of Pennsylvania campus.