@JLF: Jaipur’s Amber Fort as a stage for culture and arts

The Amber Fort is a marvelous piece of India’s heritage architecture.  The Fort has been much improved since I was last in Jaipur (seems to be true for a lot of India’s monuments), including a magnificent restoration of the frescoes around the main gate to the inner palace. Folks in the Tourism Agency asked Teamwork Arts to stage an event at the Fort to highlight it. Since Sanjoy Roy is all about linking built heritgage together with arts and culture, and since Teamwork Arts is – well, Teamwork Arts, what an event it was…

Exquisite lighting created a sense of eerie timelessness  The massive buildings seemed to float against the dark, following the full moon as it rose slowly above us.

The inner courtyard, once the venue for public meetings with Rajasthan’s shahs, became a venue once more.

And what perfromances they were.  A giant of India’s stage and screen, Nasreeduddin Shah’s, performed readings from one of India’s modern masterpieces of theater, Toba Tek Singh. You can hear a brief clip of the performance from the link below.

Then came an especially soulful blend of Sufi poetry and music, performed by a group from northeast India called  Sonam Kalra and the Sufi Gospel Project.

Our souls sated, it was time to feed the body. Dinner was set up in the parking lot (yes, this really is a parking lot by day). Magical, simply magical.