Friends,
The world premiere of Navarasa, a Dance-Music-Theatre production, gave the launch of the Nine Arts Festival the panache, style and WoW factor it deserved at Millennia Village on the outskirts of Seremban on 14 August 2026.
Patron YAM Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin Ibni Tuanku Muhriz together with sponsor, Biruntha Mooruthi of Talent Corp, accompanied by founder/owner of Millennia Village, Mr John Chia and Ms Susan Ho set the ball rolling with the initial savouring of cuisine to whet the evening’s rasa and appetite.
Nine — a complete number — became the recurring symbol of this year’s Festival: nine arts, nine rasas, happening in N9, a state that has itself recently experienced a whole gamut of emotions during its dramatic election!
As emcee Chacko Vadaketh declared, Navarasa — the Nine Emotions or Rasas — represents one of the most potent manifestations of what it means to be human.
The Rasa Theory, describing the essential relationship between performance and audience, was articulated in the Natya Sastra, the ancient Indian treatise on dramaturgy, more than 1,700 years ago: if a performance fails to evoke rasa in the mind of the audience, it is considered incomplete.
Without rasa, a meal has no flavour; without it, dance or music fails to touch the heart of the audience.
Indeed, an apt reminder in a world increasingly obsessed with ‘artificial’ intelligence.
What made this Navarasa unique was its daring and inclusive experiment in seamlessly combining and juxtaposing different genres of music, instrumentation, dance and theatre (natya). Each genre was allowed to retain its own identity while contributing meaningfully to the larger work. Every performer had his or her moment to make a claim on the stage.
We were enthralled by composer, musician and Festival Artistic Director Foo Mei Yi, alongside violinist Bartosz Woroch, suling player Yii Kah Hoe and percussionist Joachim Lim, all convincing in their respective roles. The young musicians of Noghori Arts School brought an indigenous flavour to the work, connecting the various rasas through the Sutra dancers’ inspired, Randai-like circular movements.
But it was the choreography by Sutra Collectives, under the direction of Datuk Ramli Ibrahim, that ultimately stole the show — transcending the boundaries between traditional and contemporary dance genres and lifting the entire performance onto the wings of magic.
From the very beginning, there was a sense that this was going to be an extraordinary evening.
As audiences entered Millennia Village, the green, sylvan lobby and swimming pool opened towards a massive granite rockface, dramatically illuminated as a natural theatrical backdrop. A fresh forest breeze brushed against our faces and clothes.
Nature itself seemed to have been invited onto the stage. And what a stage it was.
Millennia Village was the quintessential setting for the launch of the Nine Arts Festival. Its architecture, landscape and dramatic natural surroundings did not merely accommodate the performance — they became part of the experience.
It ultimately gave Millennia Village the perfect raison d’être for its architectural vision.
Peter Ho, its architect, must be mighty proud.
Sutra