The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) will host a three-day cultural event in New York City in September, dedicated to celebrate India’s rich heritage. Led by Nita Ambani, chairperson of the Reliance Foundation, the event will be held from September 12 to 14 at Lincoln Center in New York City.
The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre Weekend will bring Indian artists and performers to a global stage. As a destination of the arts, New York City is a fitting location for this three-day celebration of Indian heritage.
Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, founded by Ambani in 2023, was inaugurated with a mega event that featured celebrities from around the world, all adorned head to toe in Indian craftsmanship. This year, Nita Ambani is looking at placing Indian arts and artists at the “center of the world’s creative imagination.”
“After seeing Lincoln Center and Sydney Opera House with my children, I used to wonder why India couldn’t have a space like that. I was keen to create a space that could showcase our cultural heritage, whether through dance, drama, or music—even folklore, arts, and crafts,” said Nita Ambani.
What to watch out for at Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre Weekend?
The lineup of the festivities at the New York event is yet to be finalised but the Grand Swagat will mark the beginning of the celebration at Lincoln Square’s Damrosch Park. There will also be a panel that discusses cricket, a Bollywood dance workshop led by choreographer Shiamak Davar, yoga everyday with wellness expert Eddie Stern and much more. The event will also see Bollywood singers Shankar Mahadevan and Shreya Ghoshal and classical musician Rishab Sharma.
Nita Ambani will also bring ‘The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation’ to Lincoln Center for live performances.
The festivities will also showcase Ambani’s handloom emporium, Swadesh, at an invite-only gala featuring a fashion show curated by designer Manish Malhotra and a specially crafted menu by chef Vikas Khanna. “NMACC is doing such an amazing job of making people understand India, and with her platform and her vision to bring India to the world, it’s absolutely an honour just to be a part of this,” Khanna said.
From a very young age, Nita Ambani showed a talent for the performing arts and trained in Bharatnatyam. Her debut performance was at a temple as finding a theatre was expensive for her parents at the time. “That was the time that the seeds of doing something for art and artisans took shape,” she said. Ambani also said that she would perform on the first night of the festivities, drawing a parallel between her first performance in a temple and her upcoming one at Lincoln Center. With NMACC Weekend, Ambani aims to celebrate Indian culture and make it more accessible to the global community.