A photo a day...

...keeps readers reading? hopefully. There's this amazing graphic artist/writer who's a WT volunteer with me, and she's doing this photography project where she posts one photo a day. the idea is that after one year, there will be 365 photos, at least, to account for the experience.

So, here's day two. Around the corner we have a small boutique, called Bishaud Bangla, that was shown to us by one of the local women who works at AUW. it's a goldmine for us --- not only do they have amazing clothes and handmade crafts (all about bangladesh and made IN bangladesh), but they have a bookstore/room that actually has english books and subtitled dvds AND on thursday nights they have gatherings. Some weeks it's poetry readings, some weeks it's bangla discussions on political/social issues, other nights it's dance demonstrations. So, we've made friends with Alam, the owner, who lived in the States for a decade or two (NYC, all five boroughs, in case you were wondering). He invited us this Thursday for a demonstration of traditional Kathak dance. We arrived about 40 minutes late but no fear - in bangladesh nothing starts on time, especially if the power's been out for a good half hour. so it ended up that we were actually early! imagine that!


this picture is one of the young dancers that performed a solo dance as part of the demonstration. I was reminded a bit of my days of irish dancing...they had anklets of bells attached to both right and left, and much of the dance was built upon the intricate movements and stampings of their feet. This girl was SO nervous when she began to perform, she was obviously scared to set off-beat at all. The dance, overall from what i could make of it and the 90% bangla/10% english explanation afterwards, is a combination of fancy footwork that is done according to the beat of the difference music and the telling of stories through graceful movements - spins, little jumps and bird-like movements included. It was really impressive to watch how the dance school director, and head teacher, became one with the story she was telling. her facial movements never faltered, not once did i see her fall 'out of character' once she'd started.

and who told us there were no social events besides weddings for us to go to in chittagong?...

so yes. one picture a day. i'm going to try. day two - check.