Artistic and social barriers came crashing down as Bharatanatyam shared the stage with paraiaatam, a dance and percussion genre associated with funerals. On a warm afternoon, on a stretch of beach in a fishing village in south Chennai, half a dozen local children did backflips. Two tall speakers set on the sand marked out the two extremes of a stage-in-the-making about 50 metres from the Bay of Bengal. An eye-catching wooden boat with a huge blue sail served as the stage’s backdrop.
On the weekend of February 27 and 28, for the second year in a row, Urur-OlcottKuppam, a 130-year-old village, hosted an edgy music and dance festival – the Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha. Over two days, a range of musical and dance forms shared the stage probably for the first time ever.

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