After kick starting the ninth edition of the national theatre fest, Union Minister of Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni gave way to the never before performance in the country by Sasha Waltz and Guest troupe to mesmerize everybody with their awesome ‘noBody’.

Ambika Soni while speaking to the audience at Siri Fort said that she does not have any magic wand to do away with all the problems of theatre in contemporary times although she promised to put in all efforts to revive the cultural arts of the country including theatre.

She also assured to discuss the matter with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to give more space to the cultural and traditional arts of the country on the national media like Doordarshan and the All India Radio.

Dr Jabbar Patel the renowned theatre personality of India in his inaugural address said that theatre has always been struggling for its place in the society but with the new challenges such as cinema and television the challenges have grown manifold.

Even as Patel stressed on the need for the theatre to be adaptive to the modern technologies like the electronic and the digital medium he said with conviction that theatre will struggle through all the problems and will find its way in future as well like it has been doing so far.

Chairperson of National School of Drama, Amal Allana said that the need of the present time is to make theatre job oriented so that more and more youth from the present generation can associate themselves to this glorious art.

She said that efforts are being made to include theatre as part of the academic curriculum at the school level so that the coming generations can have the feel of theatre and can adopt it in future as a viable career option.

Devendra Raj Ankur, Director of NSD while throwing light on the 9th theatre festival of the institute said that the scope of the festival has increased by giving more scope to the international presence this time by including 13 different countries for performances spread across six venues across the capital spanning over a fortnight.

The fest will be showcasing 52 performances in all out which 13 will be from foreign lands including Australia, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Germany, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Nepal, Poland, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Uzbekistan, while 39 will be home productions.

The inaugural festival at Siri Fort culminated with the heated performance of the internationally acclaimed dance troupe from Berlin called Sasha Waltz and Guests. The internationally acclaimed choreographer Sasha said that the performance ‘noBody’ is the last of the trilogy comprising of three aspects of human life viz, the ‘Materialistic’, the ‘Sensuality’ (S) and the ‘noBody’ (absence of the body).

The last of the triology called ‘noBody’, says Sasha is depiction of the state where the ‘body’ is totally absent. The excellent choreographic movements of the body without any verbal interaction whatsoever explained all the pains and pleasures, which form part of each human life.

The play becomes excellent by its very idea of an abstract life in the absence of any physical body played by the marvellous aerobic movements of the bodies played by well-practiced artists.