Bhubaneswar based senior Odissi dancer Gayatri Chand deserves congratulations for creating a new platform for the young Odissi dancers through her recently launched dance festival – Gurukrupa Nrutya Samaroha – staged at Jayadev Bhawan in Bhubaneswar. Known for her fight for tradition and perfection, Her concern for the utter lack of platforms for budding and promising solo Odissi dancers has prompted her to start a dance festival.
The festival was diligently designed. It has due representation of the three major gharanas of Odissi dance prevalent in Odisha – of Guru Pankaj Charan Das, Guru Debaprasad Das and Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Wisely, half of the performers were male, and even a differentlyabled Odissi dancer. Eminent Odissi dancer and scholar Minati Mishra, the oldest performing Odissi dancer of the world today, inaugurated the festival.
Bhubaneswarbased Dibyashree Panda, disciple of Guru Pitambar Biswal, emerged as the find of the festival. This highly promising dancer’s mesmerizing presentation of pure and expressional dance numbers proved it. Endowed with a pair of arresting and eloquent eyes, she was grace personified, statuesque and poetry in motion. The ecstasy of dancing was evident from her unalloyed facial expressions. Her amazing ability to emote in spontaneity has the possibility to establish her as a queen of abhinaya in future.
Despite growing up in the distant Dhenkanal town of Odisha with very little scope to learn Odissi, Gouri Shankar Dash has established himself as a potential male dancer at a very young age. The dancer of calibrr, trained by Gurus Kasturi Patnaik, Naba Kishore Mishra and Bichitrananda Swain at various phases of his career, neatly performed Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s classic composition Ardhanariswara that demands a high degree of energy and perfect balance between the tandav and lasya aspects of dance. His facial expression desired more flexibility at times apart from a quick and clear transition from one mood to another. However, it would be expecting too much of an emerging dancer.
Debasish Patnaik from the steel city of Rourkela in Odisha , disciple of the distinguished Guru Durga Charan Ranbir, has already made a mark as a marvelous male dancer at the national and international Odissi circles. Watching the handsome dancer perform the pure dance number of Rageshri Pallabi with more of feminine grace, this reviewer felt that he must dance like a man. However, in the next number, the powerpacked Shivastaka, his masculinity was perfect. Debasish has an innate grace in him that brings out the best of elegant and devotional expressions in his dancing.
Another male dancer was Aneesh Raghavan from Puducherry – the youngest among the three male performers. Groomed by renowned dancer Sangeeta Dash from Odisha, the budding dancer possesses a face of impressive grace. His dance of delight unveiled his passion and devotion for dance. While he impressed with his sthyaee nritya (pure dance), his face looked tired in the next abhinaya number. The poor quality of recorded music used for his concert also contributed towards a dull show.
Physically challenged dancer and dance teacher, Sakti Swarupa Bir of Bhubaneswar deserves the special ovation she received from the audience – for her incredibly perfect performance. The speech and hearing impaired dancer, on whose touching life the award winning movie Hamari Beti was made featuring her in the film, enacted an astapadi from poet Jayadev’s Geet Govind – Sakhi He – with the intensity of a mature dancer. Although her guru and mentor Chittaranjan Acharya directs her from the wings through hand gestures to dance following the music (as she can’t hear), her involved and internalized dancing spoke volumes of her talent and hard work in dancing on par with any normal dancer.
Talented and graceful Samikshya Pani’s unwarranted smiles all through the concert made her show superficial. In Tandav Nrutyakari Gajanana, there was hardly any trace of tandav in her look and dance while the same set of facial expressions went on both in her pure and expressional dance segments.
