Bharatanatyam for Gaza: Aranyani Bhargav's 'Lori' Raises Funds for Children

It’s impossible to separate art from politics, and bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer Aranyani Bhargav stands by this. The artistic director of Vyuti, a Bengaluru-based dance company that explores alternative narratives, will present a solo performance titled ‘Lori’ (A Lullaby For Humanity), aimed at raising funds for children in Gaza, on Friday. The dance depicts a Palestinian survivor rescuing a child from beneath a pile of bodies in the aftermath of an airstrike and singing the child a lullaby.

The performance focuses on the aspect of violence against children in Gaza. A Unicef report says that in the past two years, more than 64,000 children have been killed or maimed across the conflict zone, including 1,000 babies. The timing of the performance is telling, seen in light of the recent episode involving the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school that killed more than 170 students (a preliminary inquiry said the US carried out the strikes).

“The rendition in Chennai was planned much before this latest war broke out,” says Aranyani. The conflict has now enveloped Lebanon as well (91 children were killed in Israel’s attack on Beirut’s suburbs on Wednesday).

The performance is part of an ongoing campaign by Indian Dancers for Gaza’s Children, an artist-led global citizen collective, co-founded by Aranyani and Donovan Roebert, a South African scholar of Indian dance, in 2024. The campaign, which benefits a paediatric charity in Gaza, has more than 920 global signatories (including 300 dancers) and has raised more than `20 lakh through 36 fundraising events, including theatre, music, dance, and storytelling sessions held in India and around the world.

Aranyani believes that as a dancer, it seemed problematic for her to put up tone-deaf performances at a time when massacres were being livestreamed. “My concern is that not enough artists are raising their voices when it comes to humanitarian concerns,” she says. “Apart from entertaining, artistes have a responsibility of holding a mirror to society, an idea that seems to be getting lost in a milieu of recurrent conflicts.”

‘Lori’ will be presented at the M S Subbulakshmi Auditorium at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai at 5.30pm. The performance is open to all and will be followed by a discussion.

‘Lori’ was inspired by a 1981 poem ‘Falastini Bachche Ke Liye Lori’, composed by late Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Actor Shabana Azmi, who knew dancer Aranyani Bhargav as a child, lent her voice to the recording of the poem that plays in the backdrop of the performance