TFA’s Shantanand Festival of Arts is back this Dec 9-11

The Shantanand Festival of Arts will also mark 40 years of community service in the field of performing arts for the Temple of Fine Arts. Seen above are the legendary teachers of TFA, from right: Radha Gopal Shetty, Vatsala Sivadass and Malar Gunaratnam during a recent event to celebrate them marking 80 years of age. They continue to dance, perform on stage and remain an inspiration for the students of the arts institution. Photo by Weekly Echo

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 – The Temple of Fine Arts’ annual arts extravaganza, Shantanand Festival Arts is set for a comeback after two years of no-show.

This year’s offerings, from Dec 9 to 11, will be packed with artistic and cultural activities, workshops as well as two feature productions, TFA Music Director Kumar Karthigesu said in a recent press statement.

The sixth edition of the annual Shantanand Festival of Arts (SFA2022) is to once again “celebrate our love for the arts with friends, rejuvenating our inherent desire to keep the arts – dance, music, drama, literature, visual art and other traditional art forms – alive. It’s time, once again, to rekindle the fire of the creative process and to refresh art lovers with the enlightening pleasures which only the arts can offer,” he said.

With the theme, “Remember, Reignite, Reconnect” for this year, Kumar said the TFA has invited selected Malaysian artists, with which the arts institution has engaged in the past as collaborators in the creative process, to welcome them back to “remember” the time spent together in creating something unique.

Zuliana binti Zainal Abidin sings Ulek Mayang song in one of TFA’s collaborative productions – ASLI.

“We welcome arts students, practitioners, connoisseurs, laymen and intellectuals, to reignite the
flame of friendship and to show the world that the Arts is indeed a special space, where bonds
are formed and segregation is broken.

“We invite all – young and old, new friends and old, amateur and professional – to connect and
reconnect with our rich and radiant past, celebrate the present and set the trajectory towards a
shining glorious future.”

The TFA will also celebrate 40 years of community work in the arts, Kumar said.

“When our founder Swami Shantanand Saraswathi lit the lamp in 1981 to open and create a space
for the nurturing of art in Malaysian youth, he called it The Temple of Fine Arts – a wholistic and
holistic academy for performing arts, a sanctuary for artists – where one would be inspired and
enlightened by the potential within themselves to seek knowledge in the arts, and to then inspire
others to do so.

“This is the essence of the community work done by The Temple of Fine Arts for the past four
decades. The work took many forms – music, dance, drama, culinary arts, visual arts, and travel
to heritage destinations rich with history and culture. The aim was to engage in realms of
knowledge and wisdom that would have a direct and positive effect on the human psyche.”

A dance drama production of TFA, employing the classical dance steps of Bharata Natyam in a scene.

The TFA hopes to use the platform of SFA 2022 to revisit some of the its dance dramas such as Ramayana, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Butterfly Lovers, Taj Mahal, for the pleasure of the younger audiences today, as well as to inspire those who had seen it before.

For further details on the arts festival as well as its workshops, which are also open to members of the public, please call: 03-22743709 or email: sfa@tfa.org.my.

Access to all events in SFA2022 will be on a “pay-as-you-wish” basis. Invitations are available through an online ticketing system at sfa.tfa.org.my

All profits from SFA2022 will be channeled towards sustaining the artistic endeavors and
charitable activities of The Temple of Fine Arts Malaysia.

–WE

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