Soorya Festival

The Soorya Festival, which holds the record forthe longest arts and music festival, is going on in Trivandrum. This year, the festival will last111 days. More than 1,500 artistes from across the country are expected to perform during this festival. Film buffs and lovers of the artswould be treated to a potpourri of films, videos,painting, dance and music, plays, religious discourses, chamber concerts, elocution and poetry and story telling over the course of thefestival.The dance and music festival will take off with a concert by K.J. Yesudas on October 1. The 10-day event will feature Odissi, Bharathanatyam,Carnatic music, Kathak, fusion and danceballet by Padma Subramaniam, RajendraGangani, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, Neyveli Santhanagopalam and Sanjay Subramaniam.Besides being the longest festival, Soorya willalso set a new record of sorts this year. It willbe for the 33rd consecutive year that vocalistYesudas and danseuse Padma Subramaniam will be participating in the Soorya festival.The festival will end on January 10, 2011, witha stage show titled ‘Dwayam’.The festival is organized by ‘Soorya Stage and FilmSociety’ founded by Soorya Krishnamoorthy.Mr Krishnamoorthy was a scientist, workingwith VSSC. He resigned his job to pursue hisinterests in Arts and went on to create historyin the field of arts.It is really amazing to know that whileconducting the world’s longest arts and musicfestival for the past 35 years, Soorya is still a non profit making, non commercial, voluntary organisation with no office building or paidstaff anywhere in the world