CHENNAI: Artistes will come and artistes will go, but performing arts will live forever. The fifth edition of DakshinaChitra’s Annual Music and Dance Festival, in collaboration with Kalakshetra Foundation, slated to begin on March 6, will address some important questions — How will traditional Indian art forms be retained in the years to come? Will it transform? How have various art forms evolved in the past decade? Titled Utsavam 2020, this year’s theme is ‘The Future of Arts’.

While there will be panel discussions in the morning at Kalakshetra, performances will be staged at DakshinaChitra in the evening. Panellists for the three-day event are practitioners of traditional art forms like Harikatha and Villupattu. Bringing their experience and expertise to the festival, they will hold discussions focussing on the evolution of their art forms and ways to keep them alive. Apart from looking at the past and future, the panellists will also talk about the relationship between art and law. In this session, the focus will be on patent laws and copyright infringement in art.

“In this digital age, how can artistes protect their choreographies from being plagiarised? Everything is uploaded on the Internet. This is a serious issue. We will have an in-depth discussion on it,” says curator Shreya Nagarajan Singh. Utsavam 2020 will have performances by youngsters between the ages of seven and 23. Some of the performances include gana and hip-hop by boys from Vyasarpadi, and Yakshagana by Aarush Shetty, among other styles. “We are featuring the younger generation today. Twenty years from now, we would like to see what they have done for their respective art forms,” adds Shreya. One of the ways to sustain an art form is by innovating and using technology to attract sponsors and audience.

Keeping this in mind, artistes like Gita Wolf, Anita Ratnam and Avinash Kumar, who experiment with their styles, will conduct a discussion and present their ideas. It took seven months for Shreya and her team to come up with this concept for the annual festival. This festival is a means of starting a dialogue on the future of performing arts. There is also a possibility of not finding a solution through this conference, says Shreya, but she is hopeful about this powerful beginning. The event will be held from March 6 to March 8. The sessions at Kalakshetra are free of cost. The performances at DakshinaChitra are ticketed. An entry fee of `130 will be collected at the location.For details, call: 7358777797