When Preeti Vasudevan, New York-based bharatanatyam dancer saw her daughter's school shut down and her professional assignments dry up due to the lockdown, she knew she had to do something else. With experience in an online learning platform previously, she sought to make the most of this situation through social impact projects. It's how she thought of stories, ones that could resonate with people around the world. "I couldn't go into a dance studio to film and had to do the filming at home. So we pulled our curtain — which is red — and used that as our 'theatre' background. It then dawned on us that all storytelling cultures use curtains as the luminal space and so it gave birth to the name of the project," she adds about naming it The Red Curtain Project.

The project aims to showcase stories from the Indian subcontinent in dance theatre style and has released its first series from the much-loved Jataka Tales that talk of compassion. Stories like The clever antelope, The hare in the moon, and The tiger and the hunter are up for viewing so far. "It's fun — seeing animals outwit humans is what we need now. We need a healthy combination of the light and the serious in our lives now," she says. The future series, she explains, will include both ancient and modern stories. It will also be open for submissions from children.