About this project

Our Mission
Launch a single project that simultaneously kickstarts a beautiful film, an unprecedented intercultural dance exchange, and a creative shrine to the body electric in India's most romantic town.

Our Situation
We, the Big Medicine Charitable Trust (BMCT), do eco-social education projects in Udaipur, Rajasthan where we're also developing a new kind of local/global body energy education that sustains traditions, provokes innovation, and offers gifted needy kids the best dance skills of the world.

Our first allies were New York's internationally acclaimed Vanaver Caravan (VC), an astonishing performance troupe and an innovative pioneer in children's dance education. They offered to come help us and we showed their work to Shilpgram Utsav, India's biggest, coolest folk art festival held in Udaipur each year. Utsav organizers were blown away and asked VC to dance for an hour in their Dec 2011 Grand Finale. VC is the first foreign group ever invited to these festivals, which feature hundreds of great Indian artists, but don't have any budget yet for international stars.

Given this historic invitation, the opportunities it offers for east/west synergy, and VC's resolve to help Udaipur start a unique dance academy, we felt it would be incredibly valuable, instructive and exciting to film their whole odyssey and share it with the world.

Our Ask
We therefore request your assistance to create "Helping Shakti Rise" a film that will enable and record the journey of a dozen global dance virtuosos to star in India's greatest folk festival, conspire with local masters, and help inspire world-class dance careers among aspiring Rajasthani youth.

We are raising about half the needed amount with VC fundraiser performances and other efforts, but still need $30,000 to make the whole thing work. Please help us out here and together we can make a little bit of dance history and a very fruitful film.

Where/Who/How/What/Why

Terrain
The destination and setting is Rajasthan's Udaipur, literally "City of the Rising Sun," a famed heritage-rich desert oasis and capitol of India's most respected princely state.

Leading Characters
Besides great Indian folk dance virtuosos, the film stars the Vanaver Caravan, a US troupe renowned for wild eclectic excellence that spans a score of cultures and births fresh miracles on stage.

Besides prize-winning performances, the Vanaver Caravan is best known for its work in schools introducing exhilarating folk dance training as the high road to personal growth, creative teamwork and intercultural empathy.

Inspirational Exchange
VC members will divide their Udaipur time between public performances, workshops in local schools, creative work with Indian masters, and inaugurating global dance classes for needy local kids.

Instigating Alchemy
The school paradigm VC is helping launch, shape and publicize is embodied in the Shakti Dance Academy (SDA), an innovative energy arts project in the heart of Udaipur's most beautiful heritage zone.

We will all be working to attract and empower youth blessed with natural dance talent regardless of their caste, class or means.

One goal is to equip a new generation of dancers from traditional backgrounds to take their heritage to new creative heights. Another is to nurture viable performance talent in kids who face few other options in life. Besides artistic training, the SDA model will also assist and endow its students with self-promotion, production and management skills.

This project and VC members will also try to help talented Rajasthani youth to incubate their own dance troupe(s); produce their own shows; and become self-sustaining artists on the global stage.

Curriculum Concepts
The Shakti Dance education model will train both street kids and classical adepts in creative footwork, bodywork, improvisation and choreography. It also will let them teach each other and use the internet to co-create with other dancers abroad.

Our educational objectives are to uncover and ignite each student's unique talents and enrich their expressiveness with outstanding skills and tools. 

Footwork training will thus encompass kathak, tap and gypsy flamenco; bodywork will move through meditation, yoga and acrobatics to break dance, Capoeira, and Kalaripayattu. (Some people sharply distinguish between therapeutic bodywork that heals and artistic bodywork that inspires. We don't. In fact, we hope to "con-fuse" the two so completely they are very hard to tell apart.)

Some classes will be taught directly by local and foreign masters; others will be live wall-projected internet collaborations with teachers and groups around the world.

Down-to-Earth Facilities
Shakti Dance Academies would simply be big lovely tents with fine dance floors, lots of mirrors and a projector/camera setup for internet interchange. The tents reflects our focus on energy instead of structure; are inexpensive to erect and replicate; and can be easily opened to audiences seated outside and the energies of the natural world.

Enduring Project Impact
The Vanaver Caravan's tour only lasts two weeks, but they will leave two brilliant young members in Udaipur for four months to study gypsy, Sufi and tribal traditions; and help train local teachers in foreign idioms like tap and flamenco as well as improvisation, choreography and stage craft.

They will also help develop Udaipur's first celebration of International Dance Day, April 29, 2012

Creating Reality with Film
"Helping Shakti Rise" will document all the Vanaver Caravan's Indian adventures including their interactions with local folk dance masters and the work of those who stay behind to train teachers, recruit students, and dance the dream into life.

The film will also introduce many indigenous dance prodigies who are venerated at India's festivals but still unknown in the West. It will capture both their art and voices in a unique workshop/forum on "Dance Energy, Synergy & Epiphany" catalyzed by the Vanaver team.

Shooting will conclude on UNESCO's International Dance Day on April 29th, which, thanks largely to this project, Udaipur kids will be celebrating for the very first time. Post-production should be finished by September and we will release the film to dance schools, film festivals and public television in the fall.

Behind the Camera
The film team will be led by the legendary Argentinean sculptor, opera designer and Indophile filmmaker, Pepe Ozan. Pepe's recent art-intensive documentaries include Ganga Ma: A Pilgrimage to the Source, Jaisalmer Ayo: Gateway of the Gypsies, and a still unreleased work on Hindu mysticism and thought.

The Unpretentious Bottom Line
Since everyone involved has volunteered to work for token wages, the budget for the whole extravaganza -- film, tour, festival workshop, and teacher dance training -- is only about $60,000. We need and pray for nearly half of that from the kickstarter community and hope that you will reach out and lend a hand.

Payback and Tax Exemptions
Project supporters will receive cool premiums, superb karma, and tax exemptions via our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor if you so desire. Everyone will also get subscriptions to Shakti Rising, our internet news service on the project's evolution, new teaching methods, and creative works.

References
The "Helping Shakti Rise" budget and other BMCT exploits are viewable here and here.

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