The Youth Cultural and Education Program wing of the Sri Lakshmi Temple is expanding its activities to provide more opportunities for artists to be part of the temple events. Durga Krishan, Ulhas Rao, Arun Saigal, Ranjani Saigal, Rasika Murali and Divya Chandramouli were part of the Thai Vellikazhami celebrations where music and dance was offered as a prayer to Mahalakshmi.

Over a 150 performers took part in the nearly eight hour long Nrityanajali where dance was offered as a prayer to Lord Shiva. "This is the fourteenth Nrityanjali and each year we are growing by leaps and bounds" said  K.G Narayana as he welcomed people to the event.

Students of Sunanda Narayanan, Jeyanthi Ghatraju, Ranjani Saigal, Poornima Risbud, Kajaal Parekh, Sangeeta Vijay, Neena Gulhati, Sridevi Tirumalai, Meena Subramanium, Sowmya Ramanathan,Jayashree Bala Rajamani and Poornima Surya took part in the gala event were they presented different items from the Bharatanatyam margam. Sumitra Anans's students presented a couple of Kuchipudi numbers. Some dancers were as young as five. Senior dancers Sangita Raghunathan , Sangeeta Vijay and Jeyanthi Ghatraju presented  beautiful pieces dedicated to Lord Shiva and Lord Muruga. Ten year old , Krupa Ravi a student of Jeyanthi Easwar of Chennai India who is visiting the United States presented a rivetting Natesha Kavituam and Todaya Mangalam. 

"It is a pleasure to see what we started fourteen years ago has grown into so much" said Priest Bhairava Sundaram who was instrumental in initiating Nrityanjali at the temple. "We are eagerly looking forward to the next event which is a fabulous Veena Venu Violin with three Percussion instruments featuring Smt. Revathi Ramasamy, Smt. Tara Anand, Shri Raman, Shri Praveen Sitaram, Shri Gourishankar and Shri Mali on March 4th, 3:30 pm at the Keefe Technical High School in Framingham, MA" said K.G Narayana. "Please check out the temple website at http://www.srilakshmi.org for more information.

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