Indian cultural festival in US starts September 25New York, Sep 18 (AZINS) The US city of Pittsburgh is set to host a six-week long Indian art and culture festival "India in Focus" from September 25, a media report said.

About 2.6 million Indian immigrants in the US will be able to take part in the festival that kicks off on September 25 at Gallery Crawl, Pittsburgh City Paper reported on Wednesday.

The Gallery Crawl is a free quarterly showcase of art and entertainment in which events take place at a variety of galleries and spaces.

The festival will open with a big street party with Indian origin Britain-born, New York-based DJ Rekha, known for her distinct style of merging classic bhangra and bollywood sounds with electronic dance music.

The festival will have five visual-art exhibitions. Indian-origin Briton Hetain Patel is making his debut with his work "At Home" at the Wood Street Galleries.

Patel uses humour and pop culture in the form of videos and photographs to explore identity formation for people with marginalised identities.

At the same venue, photographer Nandini Valli Muthiah is displaying her three photographic series that place traditional Indian cultural icons in contemporary settings.

Apart from that, Indian artists Silpa Gupta, Surabhi Saraf, Sumakshi Singh and Avinash Veeraraghavan will be displaying their talents using new media to showcase traditional Indian culture.

Photographer Gauri Gill and painter Sarika Goulatia will be presenting their documentation at 709 Penn Gallery.

Banglagore-based Nrityagram Dance Ensemble will perform on October 3 while Britain-based Indian classical dance group Aakash Odedra company are set to perform on November 6 at the Byham Theater.

Apart from art and dance, theatre artists will be performing plays from October 15-17. These artists include Canada-born playwright Ravi Jain, Indian Ink Theatre and India's Tram Theatre company.

Classical tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain will team up with the English jazz bassist Dave Holland and the eight-member SFJazz collective to perform at the festival.