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Krishna Dutt and Bijoya Dutt in performance. (Arnab Mondal)
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Women can’t mime. A concert organised recently by the NGO Kolkata Anubhav aimed at busting this myth.
The event was held at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture on the evening of September 30. It was the culmination of a two-day ‘National Seminar, Workshop and Performance on Frozen Images, Frozen Voice and Body Movements for the Deaf and Dumb’, held in association with the ministry of culture, government of India.
“In India, very few women perform mime,” said mime exponent Krishna Dutt, the director of Krishna Anubhav. “To add to this, hardly anyone takes it up as a profession. Kolkata Anubhav trains people with hearing and speech impairment and helps them gain independence. The concert is an attempt to give such people a platform.”
There were several performances, including a solo performance by Suman Bhar, a 31-year-old speech- and hearing-impaired Indian Railways employee.
“Women who are speech and hearing impaired face immense problems. Some underprivileged children and some with impairment are also performing,” says Bijoya Dutt, the secretary of Kolkata Anubhav’s cultural wing.
The grand attraction of the evening was a performance by the mother-daughter duo of Krishna and Bijoya, which fused mime with Odissi.
Tollygunge resident Soma Bhunia, who was in the audience, said: “The cause of the show is very noble. It helped one know more about people with speech and hearing impairment.”
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