Saptak Music And Dance Academy
W203, Amrapali Zodiac, Sector 120, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201307, India
Saptak Music and Dance Academy is not one room with four walls; it is a living ecosystem cradled in the heart of the old town where the city, worn by commuters and traffic lights, suddenly dips into a quiet lane lined with heritage homes and parijat trees. Enter through a teak-wood doorway carved with nāgara motifs the threshold is believed to be aligned to the North Star so the first breath a student takes inside is already tuned to a cosmic pitch. Inside, you step onto stone quarried from Makrana the same that graces the Taj Mahal cool, faintly luminescent, and acoustically alive. The main practice hall, named Dhwani Mandap, rises three stories on the pattern of a step-well; its terraced balconies allow overflow audience during evening festivals while the central floor, sunken two meters, provides natural amplification for tabla bol or soft khatak footwork. Overhead, layered wooden jaalis regulate humidity and sound, inspired by Jaipur’s jantar mantar, so that a tanpura drone at 432 Hz lingers in the air for a full seven seconds before fading.
The academy is dedicated to the twin currents of Hindustani classical vocal and percussion along with Kathak and semi-classical dance, but every student spends one morning a week in what the founders call the Silent Curriculum: a mandatory meditation on breath and sound produced only by the imagination fakir-nafs. This practice sharpens shruti perception; you can often hear a twelve-year-old girl humming the 27th variation of raag Bihag long after regular classes end. Faculty rotate between senior stalwarts like Pandit Anindo Chatterjee style tabla and young torchbearers armed with PhDs in dance notation and AI-based rhythm programming, ensuring that tradition forms a dialogue rather than a monologue.
Two smaller chambers extend from the central hub. Rasa Kutir, painted in indigo that shifts toward violet as moonlight catches it, is reserved for abhinaya practice and instrumental ensembles where ragas are taught through storytelling miniature paintings hang in crystal frames, each frame equipped with NFC tags that trigger audio explanations on personal headphones. The second chamber, Lahari, faces an interior courtyard where an ancient banyan drops aerial roots into a stone murmuring fountain set to the syllables of teen-taal: dhin dhin dha treke dhin. Advanced students think of the fountain as a metronome that never needs winding.
Annual calendar highlights include a sunrise to sunset baithak on Vasant Panchami when the roof transforms into a soft Persian carpet and one hundred oil lamps float on water-filled clay saucers forming a moving raagmala; and the monsoon rains retreat when the courtyard converts into an open-air cinema screening restored Ustad Amir Khan concert footage while tabla maestros improvise live to the past. Yet the most cherished tradition happens every full moon after classes dusk to midnight buses from Saptak roam the city with travelled instruments a sarod warming on someone’s lap, harmonium balanced between knees carrying senior students to shelter homes or parks where they teach ten-minute lessons to whoever pauses under sodium streetlights.
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- Published: July 28, 2025
