Diwali in B.C. explores feminine power with 5 weeks of celebrations

Diwali is just around the corner and, this year, an event curator and artistic director in Metro Vancouver is stretching the celebrations over five weeks and turning the attention to feminine power.

Rohit Chokhani, who has curated Diwali events for the past four years and won a 2017 Jessie Award for his work, said he wanted to do to something different with the Hindu festival of lights celebrations this year.

"The projects that I was interested in and the artists that were interested just happened this year to be all strong female voices," Chokhani said. "I saw that there was an overlaying arch in all of these voices it was around shakti which is also a Diwali message of feminine power."

Shakti, he said, is the underlying tie between the various Diwalievents in B.C.Some of the big female names in the events include filmmaker Deepa Mehta, dancer Arno Kamolika and actress Dipti Mehta.

Chokhani described Diwali as one of the biggest celebrations of the year.

"During the time of Diwali, the idea is to take the universal message of Diwali which is good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance and celebrate that message in an artistic way and hopefully transform lives by using performing arts as a mechanism for it," he said.

Expanding across the province

Chokhani is hoping to make Diwali celebrations more accessible to all British Columbianswith his new project.

"This is a new initiative with a new organization behind it and the idea is to expand provincially over the next five years," he said.

For now, the events are all in the Lower Mainland. Chokhani said he is having conversations with artists and organizations across the province from Vernon to Vancouver Island about spreading the festivities.

"The idea is to create an artistic platform for artists to showcase the multiculturalism of Canada and South Asian works at the same time so there is an intercultural dialogue," he said.

Diwali in B.C. celebrations premier on Tuesday, Oct. 17 with "Encounter" at the York Theatre and run until Thursday, Nov. 16.

With files from On The Coast and North by Northwest.