Tell an Asian to exercise, and she will probably hear it as ‘extra rice’. There is more than a grain of truth in that old joke. For Asians, rice is life.
So it came as a shock for Aravinth Kumarasamy, artistic director of Apsaras Arts Dance Academy, Singapore, when his friend, a schoolteacher, told him that students in his class thought that rice came “from a packet in the supermarket”.
He was taken aback by the fact that in a country where rice is a staple, students had no clue about its origin. A few days later, he visited an Indian school in Singapore. He noticed a patch of paddy on the campus, and asked the principal about it. “The children think that rice comes from the supermarket,” said the principal. Hence the show and tell.
That is when Kumarasamy thought that the younger generation needs to be educated on rice. He did not want to be preachy, and so Arisi: Rice-Grains of Life—a multidisciplinary dance show involving bharatnatyam and Balinese dancers—took form.
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