Manganiyar Seduction

[NOTE: This review was written in February 2021 as part of my 2010-2019 decade-in-review post.]

RIchard and I saw *The Manganiyar Seduction* at Lincoln Center's White Lights Festival in the fall of 2010. This was the concluding event of the White Lights Festival, a new series that focuses on spirituality. *The Manganiyar Seduction* is a fascinating mixture of music, design, and that indefinable something else. What you see on the stage is a collection of large boxes, nine across and four levels tall. Each is lined in red velvet and has a border of white light bulbs. A Northern Indian musician (all of them men) is in each of these boxes, and as he starts to sing or play his instrument, the lights along the border go on. One by one, until all 36 musicians are performing and illuminated. It was absolutely dazzling.