American artists perform at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music

Chennai, February 2, 2016: Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music, in collaboration with Cultural Vistas organizes ‘Celebrate the Connections Program’, an urban arts exchange program that offers Indian schools an opportunity to learn from the visiting U.S. artists. World renowned artists Ansley Jones, Angelique ‘Giddy’ Perez and Neel Agarwal conducted workshops followed by their captivating performance.

The three U.S. artists represent a diversity of urban art forms such as poetry, hip hop dance, urban music and visual art/graffiti. Neel Agarwal, world famous multi-percussionist, conducted a hands-on workshop on global percussion beats for African diasporas, Indian and Western rhythms.  Angelique “Giddy” Perez, nationally touring spoken-word poet, educated the audience on slam poetry as an art form and conducted a competition that concluded with a performance of her personal work. Hip hop dance expert, Ansley Jonestaught some of her special moves to the students of SAM. At the end, students had a chance to cipher and learn the traditional structure with the atmosphere of freestyle and battle.

The program aimed at fostering cross-cultural dialogue between the U.S. artists and students of SAM, exploring the growing global influence of urban arts. Students experienced live training in the state-of-the-art SAM studio and benefitted immensely with the exposure.