Ushering the Past into the Present

Being Neighbourly x Jayang Jhaveri, South Asian Arts Academy

Author/ Being Neighbourly
25 June 2025

I am by turns a tech entrepreneur, consultant, radio host, Hindustani vocal music teacher and producer and curator of concerts and festivals promoting South Asian fine arts,” says Jayang Jhaveri, who is wearing his ‘Founder of the South Asia Arts (SAA) Academy’ hat, while speaking to Being Neighbourly today.

Our conversation is about his current project, an avant-garde co-production of the Bhagavad Gita (‘Song of God’) with the Tang Shu Wing Theatre Studio, now showing at Freespace, West Kowloon (with English shows on 28 July at 3pm and 8pm) that I’ve been lucky enough to experience in dress rehearsal.

The show is a big production of just over two hours, with a crew of nearly 40 supporting members; not to mention the financial support of heavyweights such as the Leisure & Cultural Services department, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and the sponsorship of the Chellaram Foundation and Mrs. Purviz Shroff and the late Mr. Rusy Shroff.

Knowing a little of Jhaveri’s past, the staging of the Gita is not such a leap for the SAA Academy, which, according to the music lover, was born in 2015, when he got together with “some like-minded and kindred musical spirits to produce a concert bringing together a seemingly unlikely pair: traditional Hindustani music and jazz.

“At the after-party to the concert, though I foreswore any future productions, I found myself being coaxed into doing even bigger shows,” he shares.

Both of these bigger SAA Academy shows, in 2017 and 2019, respectively, were collaborations with the City Chamber Orchestra and were followed by two arts festivals dedicated to women in South Asian arts. Jhaveri says that the SAA Academy was conceived, “somewhere along the line, with a mission to, bring the traditional art forms of South Asia to a young, global audience within a modern sociological and technological context.” In other words, to introduce past works to present audiences in ways they can readily understand.

The staging of the Bhagavad Gita based on the ancient Sanskrit text is, then, absolutely in this vein, aligning with the wish of Jhaveri to, “maintain the sanctity and integrity of traditions which have been passed on through millenia, but also explore how these traditions converse with modernity.”

“All art evolves, but I believe that ultimately all art is emotive and aesthetics are timeless, and as long as art touches the heart, evolution is to be welcomed,” he opines.

“All our projects have a strong element of tradition and timelessness to them,” says Jhaveri adding that when it came to the Gita, they started with the music, then added in the dance and visual art components.

He calls it only natural that the SAA Academy has progressed to theatre and that collaborating with Tang Shu Wing on this production has provided them the perfect opportunity to enter this space.

Jhaveri calls Tang a “luminary” and their meeting, a fortuitous one, “hopefully paving the way for many great productions to come”. The encounter had come about when he and fellow director Neesha Jhaveri (no relation) had attended the first run of the Bhagavad Gita in Hong Kong back in 2023.

“We were blown away by the imagery, acting, movement; and the concept and the expression,” says Jhaveri, adding that they had, “merely suggested that the production deserved an English version to reach a larger audience”, whereupon Tang had suggested that they collaborate.

This month’s Gita is a re-imagining of the original Sanskrit spiritual text, rather than being a costume drama or a re-telling, with action flitting between the past —to establish the backstory of the Gita—to the present, to relate its core message to modern day life.

“Tang Shu Wing has explored issues such as power play, the turn towards spirituality and the impact of modern technologies such as AI on our society – and how all of these relate to the message of the Gita,” says Jhaveri.

“There will be moments of contemplation – and the idea is for every member of the audience to draw her or his own conclusions from what they witness,” he says, enigmatically.

Whether or not, audience members actually do so, the collision of elements will leave an indelible impression.

South Asian Arts Academy

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