by Olayinka Fadahunsi

The Baruch Performing Arts Center has gradually built a reputation as a hub of international dance, music, and theater since its official opening last year, hosting performances as varied as Afro-Brazilian samba and capoeira to classical music as interpreted by the Cuban pianist Javier Quintana.

South Asians, however, have particular reason to be pleased with the center's roster of performers: Beginning last spring with a sample of music, dance, and martial arts from the remote northern Indian region of Manipur, South Asian performing arts have been prominent in BPAC's program of events. "Baruch is the most diverse campus in the United States, and we have a large South Asian population," said BPAC general manager Kathleen Eads in a recent interview. "Addressing the needs and interests of the students is the bottom line."

In the fall, BPAC also presented a show entitled "Parallel Passages: Affect, Improvisation, and Verse in Indian and Western Musical Traditions" in conjunction with the musical group Lyceum, exploring the bridge between the classical music of Europe and the South Asian region. This spring, the center continued to highlight performers from the subcontinent with MELA, its first-ever festival devoted to arts and culture from the region. Organized in conjunction with the Indo-American Arts Council and Club India, a campus group, MELA (which means "fair" in Hindi) included performances of Kalighat, a new play by Paul Knox; Indian Fusion and Jazz, a music mélange performed by the group Nayikas, New York's first and only resident classical Indian Odissi dance theater company; a retrospective of the classic films of Indian director Satyajit Ray; and the very popular Laff-O-Rama, a stand-up comedy night that included performances by Vijai Nathan, Vidur Kapur, Kate Rigg, and Shazia Mirza.

Mirza, billed as the only professional Muslim female comic in the United Kingdom, put on a riotous example of the comedy that has earned her profiles on 60 Minutes and in the New York Times, while Kapur poked fun at his own experience as a gay Indian New Yorker. Nathan and Rigg also drew laughs with recollections of their youth, and the evolution of their identity as young, urbane Asian-American women.

Kalighat, a play set in Mother Teresa's home in Calcutta, counterbalanced the humor with a serious examination of death and compassion in a mission hospital. Knox, the playwright, spent some time working at the real Kalighat, and his experience forms much of the source material for the play. Exploring the interaction between a group of visiting Western volunteers and the resident staff and patients of the home, the play confronts issues of religion and sexuality from both Western and Indian perspectives. "I wanted to show what is human about mundane missionary work," Knox said in a recent interview with Baruch's student newspaper the Ticker. "It is an experience colored by people."

In the realm of classical dance, the Nayikas Dance Theater Company staged a dazzling exhibit of dances in the Odissi tradition of the Orissa state in India. "Nayikas" means "heroine," and the featured dances placed female protagonists at the center of the action. Odissi is the oldest dance form in India, dating back to the 2nd century B.C. The Odissi performers demonstrated both grace and flair with their innovative use of colorful lighting coupled with traditional poses, eye movements, and foot positioning. The soundtrack, particularly during the company's rendition of the folk story "Chitrangada," also demonstrated the endless possibilities of cultural fusion, as time-honored compositions mixed with contemporary electronic beats.

Nayikas was a conscious effort to bridge classical and contemporary sensibilities, according to choreographer Myna Mukherjee. "A lot of the time South Asians tend to see classical dance as boring or as heritage," she said to a reporter from Newsday. "What we are trying to do is infuse it with contemporary stories and to draw parallels with our own stories, the stories which, as women of today, we can identify with while using classical Indian dance grammar."

Writer Salman Rushdie attended a performance by Nayikas and praised the theme of the MELA festival. "I think it's great to see this community begin to find its artistic feel in the country," he told a reporter from the Ticker.