SHANTA SERBJEET SINGH

SHANTA SERBJEET SINGH:BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE

Category:Senior Art /Culture Critique

Status: Independent/Freelancer

SHANTA SERBJEET SINGH is the Consultant for UNESCO and the World Culture Forum Alliance ( WCFA), a body paralleling the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum. She is one of the seniormost critics/columnists of the arts in India. As the dance critic for The Hindustan Times since l972 and the regular arts columnist for the leading ‘pink’ paper, The Economic Times (in all its editions),for the same period of over twenty-five years, from 1970, until 2000, as a contributor to most of the major newspapers and publications of India, she has made a seminal contribution to the shaping of cultural policy and growth of the arts in the country.

In recognition of this she was honoured, in 2001, by the conferral of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the premier Govt. run cultural institution for the arts in India and received a similar award from the Sahitya Kala Parishad, the cultural body of Delhi Government the following year.

She is on the Central Audition Board of Doordarshan, the highest body for grading performing artistes, as well as on the Experts Selection committees of one of the most prestigious Govt. of India bodies involved in culture, the The Indian Council for Cultural relations. She pioneered programmes like “Music in the Park” for the NDMC for sensitizing and adding to the quality of life in Delhi.

Several well-known books, such as THE FIFTIETH MILESTONE; A FEMININE CRITIQUE, (Published by Sterling Publishers) to mark fifty years of the Republic of India, NANAK, THE GURU (Published by Orient Longmans) and AMERICA & YOU (Published by the United States Information Service have gone into reprints.

Her latest book INDIAN DANCE; THE ULTIMATE METAPHOR (Published by Ravi Kumar, Paris) was released by the former Prime Minister, Shri Atal Behari Vajpeyi in early 2000. And to date is on the bestselling Author’s list of Amazon.com

She has also specialized in films, made documentaries like THE DEVADASI PARAMPARA and CULTURE OF LADAKH as well as composed music for several films and television serials (Himalaya Darshan, Himalaya Watch, Kashmir etc.) produced and directed by her husband, Serbjeet Singh. She has also served on a number of Selection Committees and national juries of the International Film Festivals of India and is invited regularly to attend the Cannes and Berlin International Film Festivals and write about them in the Indian media.

She represented India at the 1^st China Dance Festival, organized by the Chinese Govt. in Kunming and in November for the Asia Arts Net Conference (AAN) in Taiwan, the first Cultural Industries Symposium in Bewijing as a prelude to the Chinese Olympics and several other international seminars and conferences.

As international Chair for APPAN, since 2000 ( The Asia-Pacific Performing Arts Network),a platform for bringing together performing artistes of this entire region set up under the aegis of UNESCO in 2000, she has organized major Conferences-Arts encounters like “Journey to the East” (2000) and “Into the Sacred Waters” (2001), in the Himalayas, “ The Role of Healing In the Arts of Asia” in Seoul in May, 2002 and in January, 2003 the focus was on the “Male/Female Role in the Realm of the Sacred Arts of Asia and its Modern Context,” held on the banks of the Ganges. APPAN’s events have featured in all parts of Asia and the West, the last two being at New York’s prestigious La MaMa theatre in November 2008 and in Tasmania in April 2009. In September 2009 the city of Yokohama will host an APPAN festival and seminar on “The role of Healing in the Arts”, a theme pioneered by Appan and her. The Sangeet Natak Akademi has also brought a book on APPAN’s work in taking healing to the 2005 post –tsunami victims in four Asian countries.

SHANTA SERBJEET SINGH is an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Berkeley, California and earlier did her B.A. in English Hons. from Calcutta University and another A.B. in Pol. Sc. from the University of Ohio.

She is married to Serbjeet Singh, the well known Himalayas expert , film maker and painter, has two sons and lives in New Delhi.