A CONVERSATION WITH MIRA KAUSHIK ABOUT ANHAD 2023

My Tiger Janu by Chila Kumari Singh Burman

On Saturday 12 August, Hounslow High Street will once again buzz with the sounds and colour of Anhad. This exciting festival of South Asian outdoor arts will burst onto the scene, showcasing a wonderful mix of music, dance, installations and theatre for everyone to enjoy.

Anhad means ‘limitless’ in English and reflects the broad range of arts presented in the festival. The idea for Anhad was developed by Bell Square London in partnership with local arts curator, Mira Kaushik. Mira has a longstanding love of outdoor arts and brings that passion to the festival’s programme.

Recently, I caught up with Mira to chat about what brought her to working on Anhad.

Jan:

Mira, you’ve told me before that outdoor arts have really always been part of your life.

Mira:

Yes, some of my earliest memories are of unconventional performances going right back to when I was just 3 years of age. I was besotted by the ballerina on the swing and a performing bear at a circus in Belgrade where I was born. Later on, I moved to a remote town in Madhya Pradesh in India, where I grew up seeing folk theatre like Nautanki and street performers like Bahurupias, the quick-change impressionist artists so widespread at the time. There were so many vivid, tribal performance traditions rooted in the State and they all instilled a love of outdoor performance in me.

Jan:

And was it this that made you decide to go in to drama?

Well, I moved to Delhi in the seventies and this just opened a new world for me. I found myself performing in the large-scale, Russian-style theatre shows being presented by my school at the city's National Stadium. Then in my late teens, I went to college, still in Delhi, and became aware of the hugely influential theatre director and writer, Guru Badal Sircar - he was the champion of modern political and intellectual physical theatre in India. He also took theatre out into the public arena and pioneered contemporary theatre in courtyards, parks and in the streets with the audience sitting all around.

Jan:

And how did all these experiences influence your own work?

Mira:

It was many years later. I’d moved to the UK and, by this time, was Director of Akademi, the South Asian Dance organisation based in North London. It was Akademi’s 21st birthday which gave us the opportunity to work with 100 dancers to create a stunning outdoor dance performance on the terraces of the Southbank Centre. It was called Coming of Age, because of Akademi’s 21st, but it was also a celebration of where the South Asian dance scene had got to by then. It was seen by 1000s of people and, politically, it gave visibility and a whole new confidence to the Indian dance sector.

Having had such a success, our ambition grew, and a couple of years later, we ended up creating Escapade, which was even bigger than Coming of Age. Akademi has continued producing outdoor arts shows ever since which has taken dance to thousands of people. Bell Square was our partner and collaborator for many of these creative endeavours and audiences here may remember Akademi shows like Sufi:Zen and Paradiso in years gone by.

Jan:

And in fact, back in 2009, Akademi’s Initium was the very first outdoor arts show we did on Hounslow High Street. It was the first of a series of pop-up events that, by 2014, led to the development of Bell Square!

But back to Anhad! Mira, maybe you could tell us why this festival is so important for Outdoor Arts in the UK.

Mira:

After leaving Akademi in 2020, I realised that there were very few South Asian artists and companies, across all the different artforms, presenting their work outdoors. Many of the outdoor arts festivals didn’t really include many South Asian artists, either. Dance was definitely ahead of the game but other sectors like theatre or visual arts were not represented actively. I talked about this with Bell Square and we agreed to do something about it.

And so in 2022, we did Anhad. It’s a festival of outdoor contemporary arts at Bell Square, which is not a Mela. Hounslow Council and the National Lottery Community Fund supported it and it was hailed as one of the top ten festivals of outdoor arts in 2022. This year, we have additional funding from Arts Council England, so it will be bigger! I am so pleased that this collaboration is already doing so much for South Asian arts.

Jan:

I’m also really looking forward to seeing where Anhad gets to in another few years’ time. In the meantime, though, it’s also such a great day in Hounslow – it has such a lovely festival feel with performances of all different types going on through the day, wrapping up late in the evening with star DJ, Indian Man. And looking on throughout the day will be Chila Burman’s famous My Tiger Janu.

It will be a really amazing day – please come and join us. It starts at 3.00 pm and goes on through to 10.00 pm. As always at Bell Square, every performance is free and everyone is welcome!