This hive holds dark horses

There are 10,000 variations to play the game of snakes on your phone and laptop, according to fadesingh or Rohit Gupta. Gupta's programming and coding workshop at the Hive Community festival on Sunday was held to demonstrate this. Held at The Hive in Khar, the festival boasted of comedians, poets, singers, mime artists, spiritual leaders and budding entrepreneurs and saw a crowd of 200 people at the venue from 12 pm to midnight.

National streets for performing arts (NSPA), a non-profit music organisation that makes music and art accessible to public, held two shows at Kabir Café. A band of two male performers Neeraj Arya and Vivek Solanki performed Kabir's (the poet) poems in rock and reggae genre along with Holoise Saldanha and Manuel D'souza who are a Konkani folk singer and a violinist/guitarist respectively. "We are trying to bring the art of busking to Mumbai where street artists display their talents to the public at places like metros, gardens, parks and streets. These artists are independent and even get to earn a livelihood like this. The hive gives us a platform to experiment," said Tanvi Shah, NSPA's performance associate.

A masterclass on looping sounds called 'Loopfest' and appreciating classical music called 'Raag Taala' was organised by urban beat project where Cameron Campbell and Vivek Rajagopalan taught over 15 participants on recording sounds and looping them to create a musical sequence. "At this community centre, we develop a paying audience for the musicians we mentor. This is the place where they show themselves to the world and find a voice. A lot of content and ideas are experimented here which is what the city needs," said Laiq Qureshi, founder of the urban beat project.

Apart from an interactive session on Marathi literature an poetry, a painting exhibition on faces by Trishna Patnaik and various start ups stalls, The hive threw a challenge at comedians to not perform their sketches but to entertain the audience only on the foundation of crowdwork where they warm-up the audiences before the actual show begins. There was an anti-nuclear mime show where Susanta Das mimed about the destruction a nuclear power plant causes to the environment. A cineplay was screened called 'Between the lines' by Nandita Das, Divya Jagdale and Subodh Maskara which is a video recorded version of a play shot on stage.

Known as the incubator of the underground talent scene in Mumbai, The Hive was started six years ago to provide alternate entertainment to Mumbaikars. "We are a co-working space by day, where start-ups build their new business and event organisers by night. We have the longest running open mic night in India called Big Mic Gigs. We plan to have this community festival every alternate Sunday and the entry is free but some artists do charge for their event but our maximum price is Rs400. We wish to tell the city that there is something beyond movies and malls and many people are doing groundbreaking and experimental things and need support," said Sharin Bhatti, co-founder of The Hive.