Gujarat’s famed traditional dance form Garba has been nominated by India for inclusion in the UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list. The latest nomination will be considered for the next year cycle, a top official said on Saturday. Secretary of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Tim Curtis had shared details on it during a presentation made at an event held at the National Museum here to mark the UNESCO tag awarded to Kolkata’s Durga Puja festival last December. The Intergovernmental Committee of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage had

She’s a pole in one! A Brooklyn-based artist and dance instructor is the nation’s newest pole dancing champion. Donna Carnow, 28, took the top prize at the 2022 US National Pole Art Champion in Orlando, Fla., this month, earning a gold medal, a trophy and $1,000 prize. “Still in shock, my heart is still exploding,” Carnow said in a triumphant Aug. 14 Instagram post. “I truly feel like the luckiest person in the world.” To capture the top prize during the Aug 13 competition — sponsored by The Pole Sport Organization — Carnow bested 11

It is the artist—folk, martial, tribal, classical and ritualistic, under the very gruelling circumstances of past and present day society and with a degree of sacrifice— who has carried the various expressions of India’s tangible and intangible arts through to the present day. This alone has undoubtedly afforded the crucial links that modern or contemporary expression in India, has built itself upon. And it is because of their sacrifice that we can continue as a nation to boast of our great cultural traditions. Secularists must accept the plurality and