Sangeet Natak Akademi
Inaugurated in January 1953 by the first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Sangeet Natak Akademi is India’s first National Academy for music, dance and drama. It has been ‘functioning as the apex body of the performing arts in the country, preserving and promoting the vast intangible heritage of India’s diverse culture expressed in the forms of music, dance and drama’. An autonomous body of Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India, the Akademi coordinates and collaborates with different government art institutions and art academies of every state and territory as well as with major cultural institutions of the country.
Fully funded by Government for implementation of its schemes and programmes, Sangeet Natak Akademi organizes numerous programmes and cultural activities like National and Regional Festivals, Yuva Utsav and seminar and workshops on music, dance and theatre. It also arranges performances by renowned veterans and talented young artists round the year through various training programmes and activities. The Akademi has also established teaching institutions like National School of Drama and Kathak Kendra in Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Akademi in Imphal. The Akademi in order to recognize and appreciate the performances confers awards on the artists, which are considered to be the highest national recognition for an artist.
Some of the major attractions of the Akademi are its museum, audio-visual archive and library. The museum is a must see place of the Akademi as the main gallery of it has over 200 musical instruments on display. It is a very interesting place and will be an enriching experience even for those who are not music lovers. The audio-visual archive is the largest and most extensive collection in India on performing arts. It is regarded as a sacred place for all the researchers of performing arts as it has a very rare collection of recorded works of maestros of these fields. The library is another popular place for scholars, students and researchers of the Performing arts field as this unique multilingual library has around 22000 books covering almost all the aspects, critical development and trends in music, theatre and dance. The library consists of books in many regional languages apart from English and Hindi.
