In today's news we feature interview with B on aura, which is just a little step in transition from capitalistic economy to spiritually based one. It should help us to understand more about shared gift economy, and it should take a step beyond the logical mind, start heading toward intuitive mind. Auroville cyclone releif team informs us that they will no longer take any new requests for fencing nor any bills for clearing work that was organized by individuals. The AVCRT clearing teams will continue to work until the end of June. Read more

"Mutation in Progress" got nominated at the 14th backup festival at the Bauhaus University in Weimar! »Mutation in Progress« was an artistic collaboration between 5 Auroville artists: Marie-Claire Barsotti (Sculptures), Chloé Sanchez (Sound Design), Christoph Pohl (Video Installation), Ana Rute Costa (Dance) and Denis Ben Sussan (Photography). We saw The installation at Gallery Square Circle during the 2nd Auroville Film Festival in September/October 2011. Between 8th to 19th from 7.30 - 8.30am Tanja is offering swimming lessons in La Piscine Read more

The imaginative  trunk on the bypass road between Kalabhumi to Arka was very much inspiring to Liliana to made it alive. Here is a short interview with her just after she and Nelle finished the art installation in the middle of hot afternoon with bikes passing by, and the road workers on their job. The trunk, most likely the remains of the cyclone Thane is now alive again, with purple vest and some very colorful flowers on the head, made by Liliana at the workshop. And, of course this piece of art belongs to all, and invites to continue. Read more

Parvathy Baul is a singer, painter and storyteller from West Bengal. After receiving her initial music and dance training during her childhood, she studied visual arts at the Kala Bhavan at Shantiniketan, the university founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Meeting with the living tradition of Baul prompted her to choose the path of self-training in the Baul order rather than an institutional degree. Impressive beauty, personality and intensity of her devotional chanting and rotating dance, make her unique. Read more

A slide show of sacred Ladakh shares a pilgrimage into the coreof the Buddhist Spirit. Bring your special dish and your recipe to the market "food contest table" before noon, made from local produce. A basket with AV produce is the prize! The Present Earth Day Celebration will take place this Sunday in Children's Land Sadhana Forest. Arts, workshops, performances and potluck style picnic will be there. Wonderland Art Gallery is searching for somebody to promote and develop art pieces made by Aurovilian Artists. Read more

In the sports ground of Edayanchavadi village Bindhu Malini and Vedanth Bharadwaj were performing live, with Folk-Blues acoustic set, the Kabir's poetry. They sang all the songs in Tamil language: Mira's song, To remember God , Mira's Bajan's song, Maya a Fraud, Sattle Sound of Universe. Bindhu's husband Vasu Vikshi also jumped on stage to play and sing with humor about Kabir in the contemporary contest and the Kaveri River's song. - www.vedanth.in - www.kabirproject.org - www.aurovilleperformingarts.com - Read more

Who walks? What flies? it's a collective exhibition about the Kabir poetry in Kala Kendra by 5 artists. They speak about their works in the interview, in chronological order: Audrey Wallace, Srivi Kalyan: drawings art works by the children of Udavi School; Orijit Sen, graphic designer from Delhi: Hair burn like a grass; Srivi presents her sister Sandhiya Kalyan's mix-media installation; Audrey Wallace Taylor: Rajasthan Kabir Yatra drawings series; Sandhya Gopinath: Maya's painting series; Srivi Kalyan: Playing with Kabir mix media installation. Read more

Hear an interview with Susmita for accessibility on Auroville’s cycle paths. Eco-Film Fest begins 16 April - 22nd offering ecological and environmental films. Auroville: a multi-cultural knowledge society full of human capital and opportunities. Farm Group International Advisory Counicil creates a 5-year plan to potential funders abroad. The IAC will network and support links with UNESCO and International Foundations to support Arts in Auroville. Overheard in Auroville: Engage your heart and your brain before engaging your mouth Read more

Just few hours before the first Kabir musical event in Kalabhumi. Listen to Parvathy Baul, Shabnam Virmani and Prahlad Tipanya sharing (in Hindi & English) their spiritual experiences. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Satsanga, Satsangam, Satsang (Sanskrit ??????? sat = true, sanga = company) in Indian philosophy means the company of the "highest truth," the company of a guru, or company with an assembly of persons who listen to, talk about, and assimilate the truth. Read more

International Teahour of the Edible Book and MailArt exhibition Bake a Book a Day was presented by Peter Netmail in Aurelec Art Gallery. The International Edible Book Festival is a creation of Judith A. Hoffberg and Béatrice Coron. Judith got the idea over a Thanksgiving turkey with book artists in 1999. Béatrice created www.books2eat.com where despite the distances everybody can enjoy worldwide's creations. They contacted friends and colleagues; their first event happened in year 2000. Since then the festival continues as an annual sensation. Read more

Kalarippayat, Mohiniyattam and Theyyam were performed by the Udayan's Masters at Sri Aurobindo Auditorium. Kalarippayat is a great and ancient physical, cultural and martial art of Kerala, which was in prevalence from time immemorial. It is primarily an art of physical culture, well developed in a most scientific way. It aims at giving a practitioner of the art, perfect control over his body balance, flexibility, stamina and speed, and perfect neuro-muscular co-ordination, an ability of the body to react instinctively to the senses. Read more

On Tuesday 27th at Savitri Bhavan opened the exhibition Cyclone Inversions by Gotz Rogge an artist and an experimental photographer from Berlin, Germany. He organized a workshop with Sasi Somu, the teacher of photography and art at the Future School. It involved some students to make large scale Camera Obscura photographic artifacts about the landscape generated by the cyclone. In the interview (in English) Gotz, Sasi and the student Gal explain us about their experience. Their work is shown untill the 3rd of April. - www.heimat.de/halqa Read more

Since studying media choice for Auroville Radio was a logical option for Stella who wanted to spend and volunteer some more time in Auroville. She finds AV radio different mostly because is not searching exclusively for bad news, which would be the practice everywhere else, but still wishes that it would be more focused of Auroville values, reflect a state of the town with it's truth. Whole team admire Stella for her honesty, sense for a team work, and for her excellent photographic portraits she have taken over her volunteership.

The exhibition Resonance by Michel Nicolet is open for other four Sundays at Petite Ferme, Auroville. The sculptor Michel Nicolet is showing us a remarkable set of objects. One could say that his presentation consists of three parts: his words, his drawings and his sculpture. The drawings, being two dimensional, appear to be a study towards a special kind of three dimensionality. In the interview (in French) Michel tells us about his life paths and connections, which draw him to Auroville and, through cymatics, to this exhibition. Read more

In today's news we feature short interview with Sun-Ha and Nico on Bboys events and workshop in Auroville. On Saturday at 7.30 at Sri Aurobindo Auditorium, Bharat Nivas, Pavilion of indian Culture in International Zone we will see Kalarippayattu, which is the oldest form of oriental martial art encapsulating Kerala's unique cultural mytho-historical heritage. On Saturday 31st the new Cycle Kiosk at the Solar Kitchen will open its doors, and within earth day celebrations there will be workshop training “how to maintain your bicycle”. Read more

If one tries to understand what really awaits us with the first sacred music festival Kabir, stumbles upon something that is not reachable by words, it is something that will need to be experienced on our own. For sure for three days the next weekend of 6th, 7th and 8th of April we will be busy with it. In the mornings and afternoons they will screen films on Kabir, which could give us the key to the beginning of understanding. Evenings full of different musicians and artist, and since the group is big it will be hard to avoid them in all. Read more

Last Saturday in SAWCHU in Bharat Nivas, the international children's theatre workshop on Tagore literature took place. Mainly given in Tamil, its purpose was to let the children from the villages around Auroville share knowledge, work together and feel as one. And not just the children, but the teachers and some experts in theatre and education as well. The day, facilitated by Dr. Velu Saravanan, consisted of reciting poems and songs, theatre classes and as finale, a small play performed by the children. Read more

On tuesday 13th in Cripa at 9pm Daniela Regnoli has performed Uragani. This is a musical journey in the Germany of the Thirties, through ballads and songs written by Bertolt Brecht and set to music by Kurt Weil, which takes us into the past century's Europe in the period between the two wars. There are stories of women who recall their sixtenneth year of age, when they were still children and ready to fall in love with the first wrongdoer they would meet, women without adolescence who grew up too quickly under the bombs of the 2nd world war. Read more

He was involved in many different domains of Auroville and is now concentrating on his artwork. Pierre Legrand is giving us an interview about his current occupation as artist and committed member of the community and also about the struggles that he is facing. 'Sometimes I cannot understand why people fight.' Why did Pierre resign from L'Avenir? 'The problems arise because it's time for them to be solved.' What are Auroville's problems? Listen to Pierre Legrand's personal thoughts on that and on his own inner development.

Pierre Legrand's very joyful art is an expression of his deep feelings, his happiness, his problems and also his love in every being. He has developed his own mathematical rules and a secret alphabet to transform poetry into paintings. Prayers to the Mother, mantras, inner thoughts and different emotions are turned into colorful strokes and dots and every painting has its own meaning. 'The real work is our transformation.' What does Pierre mean by that? What does he think about painting? And finally: What is art? Read more

On 13th at Cripa the Voice Polyphoniques, a vocal women group made by Brigitte Cirla, Tania Zolty and Marianne Suner, has performed Black Sea Songs in Georgian, English and French. The concert is a tribute to Edisher Garakanidse, singer, ethno-musicologist and founder of the group Mtiebi from Georgia. He taught at the music conservatoire in Tbilisi where he was a colleague of Nato Zumbadze and post graduate tutor to Nana Kalandadze, who worked with Brigitte Cirla and Helen Chadwick on the first edition of this Black Sea concert. Read more

This morning, everyone was invited to come to Aikiyam School in New Creation to participate in the unveiling of colorful Peace Flags painted by Tamil children from Auroville's surrounding villages. What does 'Peace' mean to the kids? How did they get motivated to express their understanding of Peace in an artistic way? Deborah from America, who has come to Auroville as a volunteer, has been working in Aikiyam School for two months and explains to us the project's background and the philosophy of her work. Read more

Auroville will be richer from this year on also for the first sacred music festival - Kabir, which will happen on 6th, 7th and 8th of April. Moghan, one of the Auroville Performing Arts Group member, and one of the organizers talks with us on the festival itself and shortly about Kabir, a mystic poet, who was beyond any religion but had a beautiful mystic experience being one with the Divine. The poetry and music itself is very touchy, simple and speaks directly to the heart. It is joyful as the meeting with the spirit of Divine should be. Read more

The Auroville Community will have an opportunity on March 22 at 6pm at La Terrace to welcome back Mr N. Balabaskar, our new Secretary and at the same time, to bid farewell to Mr S. Loganathan, who has been the Acting-Secretary. Kabir festival of sacred music will happen here in Auroville on different location on 6th, 7th, 8th of April. In today's news we feature excerpt of interview with Moghan on it. On Saturday 24th at 7pm children of Deepanam School will share with us their annual cultural show in the form of musci, songs, dance and plays. Read more

Shadow Liberation is an experimental theater group of Evan Hastings and his students from Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology in Bangalore. Evan is a theater artist and drama therapist from USA, who directs and produces original performance pieces that grapple with pressing issues while innovative aesthetics invite audience engagement. This participatory theater piece portrays a series of unresolved conflicts around gender oppression and leaves it up to the audience to come on the stage in role and change the outcome. Read more

As part of the Tantidhatri festival, this play was performed in Cripa last thursday. It is played solely by Julia Varley, an artistic director, writer and above all member of Odin Theatret in Denmark. Written by Eugenio Barba, The Castle of Holstebro is a dialogue between a young woman and her eternal companion following the lines of a "stream of consciousness", set in a phantom castle. Two entirely different characters played by just one person is quite a thing to witness. A moving play filled with music and monologues/dialogues.

Parvathy Baul, so well known to Auroville audience and always warmly welcome for who she is, what she quietly yet firmly stands for, this time organized the Tantidhatri Festival. Her own journey as a Baul singer has not been one lined with roses, but the call for it was stronger for her. In her play, her songs, her mesmerizing voice and passion and energy brought to life a universal story of love. Her paintings, as part of the performance, vividly depicted the characters of Rahda and Krishna and others. Read more

Rwita Dutta Chakraborty was born in North Bengal and has always been into creative arts. She has become an actress for television and stage-plays and is now well known in the Bengal theater scene. After a short presentation about her Guru Tripti Mitra, who inspired her in her work, Rwita impressed the audience by her solo performance. She picks up the telephone and starts the play... Listen to the monologue in Bengali. This performance is part of the Tantidhatri International Womens Performance Arts Festival in Auroville. Read more

Kalaairani was born in Tamil Nadu and is a well known actress. She is part of the Tantidhatri International Womens Performance Arts Festival in Auroville and yesterday she performed in the MMC Auditorium. Kalaairani was telling her familys story and explained the difference between cinema and theater. More than once she made the audience laugh out loud by her funny way of narrating. Maybe it is because of her 'Tanglish', a humorous mixture of English and Tamil, that her acting is so special and hilarious. Read more

This is a performance called 'Yuki' by Keiin Yoshimura from Japan. It is one of the most popular jiuta dances which tells the story about the Japanese woman Yuki who decides to become a nun in a monastery. Accompanied by traditional Japanese music (Soh Sugiura) Keiins sublime movements and her fascinating appearance impressed the audience. After her dance, the visitors were given the chance to ask questions and get to know her a little better. Programme in English and Japanese. Read more