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SummerMela

SUMMER MELA – Roma Fondation Alain Daniélou, India is a Festival of Indian Cultural and Art organised annually by the Alain Daniélou Foundation since 2013 in the city and province of Rome.
“MELA” in Sanskrit means “meeting or collective celebration of a particular festivity” and perhaps the best-known of these celebrations is the Kumbh Mela during which millions of pilgrims gather in India’s most holy places evey year.
Thus, the Alain Daniélou Foundation’s Summer Mela is conceived as a moment of celebration and an invitation to participate and understand Indian culture in its finest traditional and contemporary expressions.
Each year, the Summer Mela offers a rich programme of performances, concerts, exhibitions, workshops and conferences. Participants in previous editions include the Dhrupad singers Pandit Ritwik Sanyal and Ustad F. Wasiffudin Dagar, the bansuri master Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, the grammy-awarded Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, the Psarantonis Quartet, the Kathakali theatre and dance troupe Sadanam Harikumar Academy, the bharatanatyam and contemporary dancer Mavin Khoo, the Kathak dancer Anuj Mishra, the Milon Mela music and theatre group, the cinema directors Shekhar Kapur and Rajat Kapoor, the visual artists Subodh Gupta, Barthi Kher, Nikhil Chopra, Atul Dodiya, Atul Bhalla and Shuddabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media), Anju Dodiya the architect Raj Rewal and the writers Samhita Arni and Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi.
The Summer Mela Festival has been realised in collaboration with the Embassy of India in Rome and other prestigious cultural Institutions, such as Museo delle Arti del XXI secolo / Fondazione MaXXI, for which the Alain Daniélou Foundation curated the “MAXXI FINDs INDIA”, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Accademia Filarmonica Romana, MNAO – National Museum of Oriental Art, Casa delle Letterature, Istituzione Palazzo Rospigliosi, Siena Art Institute, Teatro Della Dodicesima, Casa Asia (Barcelone), University Santiago di Campostela, University Valladolid.  It is held under the patronage of the Lazio Regional Authority, Rome Metropolitan Authority, Province of Rome, Municipality of Zagarolo and Incredible India (India Tourism Office, Milan).

To see the programmes, videos and photo galleries of past editions of the festival, please follow the link to the official site of the summer mela.