(bright upbeat music) - Nitya Nritya Foundation is a Salt Lake City based nonprofit dedicated to bringing the best of Indian classical dance and music to Utah from all over the world.

Artistic Director, Jyothsna Sainath, is here to tell us more about the upcoming production they have.

Hi there, welcome so much.

So, talk about the cross-cultural program, you're calling it Sangam, and what it involves.

- Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

So, I'd like to start by saying that I was very honored to be a recipient of an individual artist empowerment grant from the Salt Lake City Arts Council in 2022.

And Sangam is the culmination of the work that I did in collaboration with Nitya Nritya Foundation as part of this grant.

And Sangam is a word from Sanskrit, which literally means the confluence.

And this production is meant to reflect that spirit by the bringing together of cultures, of bringing together of cultural narratives really, and of bringing together of artistic streams from different cultures, all in the Salt Lake Valley.

And we are doing this by stringing together a few animal fables.

Some of them are from the Indian tradition, they're from an ancient Sanskrit text that's been around for about 2,000 years.

And one of the stories is from Aesop fables, and one from a Native American tradition.

And we are presenting this in the language of Bharatanatyam, which is a form of South Indian classical dance that I'm a practitioner of.

- Oh, okay.

- And the music for this production is constructed freshly for this production.

And the musicians, the sounds are pretty much coming from across the world.

We have West African drums, a Turkish drum, Native American flute, Indian voice, Indian percussion.

All of this.

- It's gonna be fascinating.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you for doing it, and congratulations on your grant, you made it possible.

Thanks.

- Thank you so much.

- And if you would like to know more about that upcoming production of the Nitya Nritya Foundation of Sangam, it's April 30th from 4:30 to 6:30 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.

Just go to nityanritya.com.

That's nityanritya.com.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching "Contact".

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