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Southbank Centre’s Alchemy festival returns for a second year with a wide-ranging, 11-day programme of contemporary and traditional music and dance, debate, literature, film, craft and fashion. Building on relationships forged in 2010 between Southbank Centre and leading artists and cultural organisations, this festival looks at India’s changing economic and cultural landscape, exploring its relationship with and influence on the UK and vice versa. Exploring the tensions between classical and folk traditions, science and religion and urban and rural, that in-part characterise Indian culture as it emerges as a major economic superpower, provides some of the central themes and focuses. Mirroring the diversity and complexity of the country itself, festival-goers can expect cutting-edge music and popular entertainment alongside traditional dance and drumming, ancient crafts alongside the latest fashion and hard-hitting debate.