Word: conch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have been built on the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, and right-wing Hindu politicians had for years sought to exploit sectarian passions by promising to build a temple honoring Ram on the site of the mosque. On Dec. 6, 1992, amid the sounds of the ceremonial conch, a Hindu mob ravaged the mosque, reducing it to rubble. The act sparked Muslim outrage around the country, provoking several months of intercommunal rioting in which Hindus and Muslims attacked one another, burning and looting homes, shops and places of worship...
...have our own ritual that has evolved over the years. It usually starts with blowing a conch-shell horn to rouse all the members. We walk down the beach, form a larger circle, do some jumping jacks to get the blood flowing. And one of our members always has a chant - a different chant each week that we always do our jumping jacks to. Then we go into the water and form a larger circle there - people are welcome to scream - and then it's a kind of open swim after that. For the past few years, the New York...
Perhaps the most whimsical performance of the evening came from Blumenthal, considered a pioneer of so-called molecular gastronomy. First came the conch shells, which servers placed on the table in front of each guest. Inside was an iPod Nano. Then came Blumenthal himself: tall, beefy, with a buzz-cut. "The idea is," he told the assembled foodies, "if you bite into something, and you put on music, the crispiness is accentuated." OK. So the diners - retirees, corporate execs, lawyers and thin blondes in five-inch stilettos - went along for the ride and slipped on the headphones. Next came...
...does this physically by turning the stage into a 7.5-m by 4.8-m swimming pool through which her actors move, and imaginatively by cutting the action between real and mythological time. Even when the village women gather to wash clothes, the constant call of the conch reminds them of a more spiritual life beyond the lagoon. Devised by Nawalowalo and her four actors, Vula evokes a state of being as natural as the tides. "You shut five Pacific Islander women in a room," the director says, "and then you come out with this piece that's that kind...
...proved to be a turning point. Being exposed to the female rituals of village life made the director "want to go deeper into my own culture," she says. By decade's end, she had returned to live in New Zealand, and a few years later her theater company The Conch was born. As a teacher at Wellington's New Zealand Drama School, she had seen the need for Pacific performers to devise their own material: "There are only a number of brown parts on a TV series. So it's about making your own market." The Conch's first theatrical...