Arangetram

At 7 pm on 10 July, the Giorgio Cini Foundation Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies is staging a rare performance of Indian Bharata Natyam dance: the Arangetram (debut) of Moritz Zavan Stoeckle, a young Venetian dancer, who will be presented to the audience by the renowned dancer and choreographer Mavin Khoo.

Arangetram, the “debut” of a male or female Bharata Natyam dancer, is celebrated after long training involving a series of studies on the art of dance, including knowledge about aesthetics, etiquette, grammar, language and the typical refinements of the Lasya aspect of Bharata Natyam. The term Arangetram is derived from Arangam, a stage, and etram, which means to reach or to climb onto, and alludes to the debut ceremony when the young dancer is presented to the audience by his or her guru.

Moritz Zavan Stoeckle will be accompanied on stage by Pushkala Gopal (singer), Mavin Khoo (nattuvangam), Bhavani Shanka (mridangam) and Kartik Raghunathan (violin).

Members of the public are invited also to attend the ritual ceremony to be held at 6.45 pm, ahead of the dance performance.

 

Moritz Zavan Stoeckle

Moritz Zavan Stoeckle began to practice classical Bharata Natyam dance at the age of ten under Savitri Nair from the Kalakshetra Foundation (Chennai) in workshops at the Giorgio Cini Foundation until 2001. He then continued his studies in London with the dancer Mavin Khoo, a student of K. Lakshman, and with Vena Ramphal and Anusha Subrahmanyam. In 2004 he worked as a dancer at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. In 2005 he moved to Siena to train with Maresa Moglia at the Natana Vedica East/West Performing Arts Institute. Since 2005 he has made regular trips to Chennai in India, where he has studied with A. Janardhanan and C.K. Balagopalan at the Kalakshetra Foundation, and with Meena Raman. In India he also furthered his knowledge of Carnatic music and rhythm with the singer and composer B. Seetharama Sarma. For several years he has been performing in Italy and abroad, as a soloist or in collaboration with the Mangalam company of Maresa Moglia and Mavin Khoo (including at Big Dance 2006, London). In 2012 he won the audience’s prize in a contemporary dance competition (Giovani Danze d’Autore, Veneto) with a performance entitled mono-dia-loghi ritmici, by N. Biondi and M. Zavan; he also took part in the RomaEuropa Festival 2012, where he received a special mention.