Antarang Performing Arts Academy
GT-101, Ground Floor, Play School, Lane No.13, next to Footprints, Gejha, Sector 93A, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201304, India
https://www.antarangartsacademy.com/
Antarang Performing Arts Academy is a Kolkata-based institution that positions itself at the intersection of rigorous classical training and contemporary stagecraft. Founded in 2009 by sitarist, composer and cultural entrepreneur Soumyojit Das, the academy was born from his conviction that “heritage flourishes only when it is lived, debated, reinvented and shared”, a motto now stencilled on the studio’s maple-wood entrance. The main campus sits on the second floor of a 1925 Art-Deco mansion on Ballygunge Circular Road; the 1800 sq ft hall, once a private ballroom, retains its stained-glass clerestory and chandeliers, but is now lined with sound diffusers tuned to Carnatic tambura frequencies. Overlooking a frangipani-lined courtyard, a smaller mezzanine houses a digital workstation, a modest library of digitised 78-rpm field recordings, and a repaired 1956 Philips reel-to-reel on which students learn the arc of magnetic tape editing.
Antarang divides its calendar into three concentric programs.
1. Core—Intensive year-round modules for ages 12–26 in Hindustani vocal, sitar, tabla, Bharatanatyam and Odissi, benchmarked to the Prayag Sangit Samiti syllabus but supplemented with micro-tonal analysis sessions and phrase-mapping software developed in-house.
2. Perspective—Quarterly weekend electives open to all ages, covering topics as eclectic as electronic processing of raag sketches, NGO fundraising for folk artists, and Kolkata’s early gramophone history, taught by a rotating roster that has included sarangi legend Ustad Kamal Sabri, musicologist Amlan Dasgupta and Grammy-winning engineer Kabir Khama.
3. Taraana—An outreach wing that places senior students as apprentice-teachers in eight under-resourced schools across Howrah and Sundarbans, culminating each January in a riverside travelling showcase performed on bamboo rafts.
The academy caps intake at 90 students per year to maintain an 1:5 faculty ratio; instruction is bilingual Bengali-English, with special assistance for Hindi and Oriya speakers. Scholarships under the “Pratidhwani” scheme currently support 37 percent of the cohort. Every full-time student receives a personal practice-room booking app, a fold-out tanpura drone, and membership in the peer-matching platform “Raagmates” to trade silent practice booths or concert tickets. Annual concert passes—labelled by gharana colour swatch and scannable from phone lock-screens—entitle members to discounted entry to partner venues such as Gyan Manch and G.D. Birla Sabhaghar.
Antarang also functions as an incubatory think-tank: last season it curated “Frameshift”, a multimedia recital where sarod phrases triggered generative AI visuals trained on Company-paintings of 19th-century Bengal, earning mention in the New York Times “Top 5 Classical Experiments”. In the pipeline are weekend science-art bootcamps for teens to solder contact-mics while deciphering raag grammar, and a citizen-soundscape app plotting ambient recordings onto a map of disappearing River Hooghly ghats. Arkadeep Kundu, the house tabla wizard who moonlights as a data analyst, devises wearable sensors that render tala cycles as haptic pulses—currently beta-tested by two deaf dance scholars.
Even casual visitors notice small acts of curatorial theatre: plant-pot incense timed to the evening “Sandhiprakash” raga, hologram projectors that unroll illuminated manuscripts behind alaap expositions, and antique paan-daans repurposed into tip boxes for road-porters lifting harmoniums. Every spring, alumni gather for adda on the portico—an unspoken continuum between Jnanadanandini Devi’s nationalist salons once held here and the academy’s own mission: to make tradition urgent, porous and irresistibly audible in the Bengali metropolis.
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- Published: July 26, 2025
