 from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. I'm Theodosia Austin, the public events programmer for the American Folklife Center. And on behalf of the entire staff, I'd like to welcome you to our last homegrown concert in the homegrown 2008 series. I'm also pleased to note that in the audience today we have members of the American Folklife Center's Board of Trustees. They're distinguished citizens from around the country who play a tremendous role in the work we do. So could the board members raise their hands? There they are. Thank you very much. It's great to be able to have them here. As you may know, Coolidge has a very distinguished career in terms of presenting all kinds of music, not just classical but also folk and roots music. In 1938, Alan Lomax captured piano performances and oral histories with the great jazz pioneer, Jelly Roll Morton, right here on this stage in Coolidge. In recent years, they reissued a CD on Grammy. They were reissued and won a Grammy. Josh White and the Gordon Gate Quartet also played here as well as Mississippi John Hurt and other legendary figures in folk and roots music. Because of all this, we have wonderful recordings of them here in the Library. And this concert and all of our concerts are part of that effort to record the artistry of traditional artists all over the country. It will also be webcast and we get a very large audience in terms of hits looking at the concerts that we've done in the past. So that's a great thing. This series is part of the history and it's recorded for the permanent collections of the Center's Archives. So anyway, since it's going to be preserved hopefully for hundreds of years, if you have a cell phone, turn it off because that will be preserved too. So you can take care of that now. The Homegrown series is a series of performances featuring the very best of traditional music and dance from around the nation. And the Folk Art Center works collaboratively with the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center to bring them to you. So these folks will be performing at the Kennedy Center tonight. If you want to check them again or let friends know that they're going to be there after you see this. We work with many talented and dedicated state folk arts coordinators across the country. The state folklorists and other arts professionals help us identify and bring to DC the most important and representative traditions from around the country. Today we're presenting a wonderful group of Indian American musicians and dancers called Surathi. There's a large Indian community in New Jersey which is where Surathi comes from. And now to tell you more about that and introduce the performers, let me introduce the folklorists at the Down Jersey Folklife Center in Millville, New Jersey, which is one of six regional folk life centers supported by the state of New Jersey. So please welcome Iveta Pirkova. Thank you very much, Thea. And thank you friends for coming in today. I really want to thank the American Folklife Center and Thea in particular for inviting us to come and give this concert today. Well, have in mind that there are more than 20 groups performing Indian classical dance and folk dances in New Jersey and Surathi is definitely one of the best ones. I met the group when I began working on the Indian project which was part of our Creative Community Connection series. And it is an eight month project all devoted to the Indian traditions and culture. And in September we had a beautiful festival of India. Well, it is very interesting thing. There are many, many groups performing Indian classical dance but most of them have chosen to work mostly on the Bharat Natya form of it which originated in the state of Tamil Nadu. Well, I was looking for a group that would have a variety of dances in their repertoire and that is how I met Surathi because they do perform several different classical forms as well as folk dances from various states in India. Well, the Indian classical dance I'm not going to take up too much time to speak about that but I just wanted to remind you that most of the legends say that the Indian classical dance came directly from God's. Well, one legend says that it was the Lord Brahma who gave the dance through the fifth Veda. And there is a text created based on this Veda which is called Natya Sastra and it keeps the instructions on every possible detail that later on developed into the Indian classical dance including footstep and head movement and the eye movement and the stage setting and ornaments and even the audience. So that by the sixth century AD the most of the forms of the Indian classical dance were already institutionalized and they were part of the temple dances. At least the Bharat Natyam and the ODC dance forms that you will see today performed by the Surathi group. So I'm really happy that you will see a program which is a very nice combination of both the classical dance and the folk dances from several different states and I hope you will enjoy this beautiful tradition of India. So for you I left outside these brochures and you can see what kind of project it was and how Surathi participated in this and you will see them in a kind of bigger context. Thank you so very much for coming today. Today Surathi will first present a traditional ODC item, Savare Palavi. Let us watch the Surathi dancers catch the mood of a hilly plantation in awesome and perform a lively dance picking tea leaves. Our musicians for this afternoon are Rajesh Roy, Indrajith Roy Chaudhary and Rishi Kumar Chatterjee. They will now present some traditional folk tunes. Kapuja, the religious festivals of India draw their genesis from various ancient scriptures. According to the legend of these scriptures, there was a time many, many thousands of moons ago when an evil creature took the guise of half a demon and half a buffalo, a ferocious Mahishasura and began to terrorize the heavens, earth and the defeated and helpless gods eventually turned to the divine trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahadeva for Saka. From the essence of these three supreme beings and of every other god and goddess was conceived goddess Durga, the fierce mother protector. Pulse each a unique and divine blessing. She battled the fierce buffalo demon. It's the defeat of Mahishasura by goddess Durga and devotees worship the goddess as the divine mother who protects her children from all evil. Hence referring to her adoringly as Ma Durga. Bhunuji dance is a dance of devotion that is a pleasant and familiar sight at every altar and temple of West Bengal during the festivities of the Durga Pooja. Devotees fill the Dhunuti and earthen pot with fragrant smoking incense which they offer to the mother in an adulatory dance accompanied by the entrancing beat of drums, cymbals and conch shells. Parathri is the festival of nine nights and nine days in which all three different forms of the Devi are worshiped. It is a very well celebrated festival throughout India and the popular Indian folk dances Garbaras and Dandya are often performed to mark this festival. Thilana is a brisk dance piece that typically concludes a traditional Bharatanatyam dance performance. It displays the virtuosity of the music by using complex footwork and captivating poses of the dancer. In this frenzied dance of destruction, Kali, the black goddess of time and death, is often portrayed as standing on her husband, God Shiva, who, in an effort to calm her down, is believed to have lain directly in her path. We now present Manipuri classical dance from the northeastern state of Manipur in India. Of this evening's presentation is a modern version of a much-loved Tagore song. While here in America fall is a season of colors, in India in the season of spring, Fagan, nature burst forth into a riot of color, celebrating spring. This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.