A lot of expectation was pinned on “Tribhanga - Explorations in Odissi dance” going by the previews on the thematic presentations produced by well-known Odissi exponent Ileana Citaristi and her Art Vision Academy. The pathways to self-realisation were laid out through four ballets across two days. The content was as mystical as the goal.
Day one featured a very unheard of story of Saraha, personification of Tantric Tibetan Buddhism where the mundane body symbolises life on earth that has to be experienced in order to surmount and establish oneself in the ultimate reality. This context was explored by the group choreography set to Odissi where the core dancers flow in and out bridging the story as it progresses on stage. In this 25-minute production, Saswat Joshi as Saraha was convincing both as a dancer and as a spiritual aspirant torn between various schools of thought that do not appeal to his finer sensibilities. His angst and anguish was well portrayed through facial expressions of quest, plea, chagrin, disdain, dismay and dejection – all common emotions of a spiritual seeker at the start of his path. Ileana played the lowly woman who attracts Saraha’s attention with her steadfast stringing of the bow before she decides to go ahead with her aim. Here the art of stringing symbolises the very earthly pre-requisites to fly high on the spiritual plane. The woman becomes his vehicle to cross over the sea of sansar (worldly requisites), a very Tantric way of viewing things.
The dance of union between Saraha and the woman was surely suggestive but not exactly subtle. It bordered on movements and mime depicted in Bollywood which are not exactly expected on a classical dance platform.
The choreographer obviously chose to ignore a number of hasta mudras that abound in the classical lexicon to depict a physical union in aesthetically dignified manner. Anwar Khurshid and Laxmikanta Palit’s music scored.
The tale of time
“Kaala”, the second presentation is the more abstract of the two as it traces the time trajectory so crucial to Hindu philosophy. This was a lengthier one justifying its content. It had more of Odissi footwork and moves than the earlier one since pure dance (nritta) is an ideal metaphor for kaala (time) that is both manifest and concealed in the universe.
The group took to intermingling and creating patterns based on the mnemonic syllable utterances (bol) that flowed in melodic rhythm set to the three tempos to the pulsating (spandan) time which is visible to the eye in nature, its changing seasons, its hills and dales, its skies and tempests and so on. In this milieu of manifest time which the choreographer visualised as an arrow that travels across past, present and future, there is yet another unseen aspect – the time that creates, executes and extinguishes and follows a cyclic pattern.
The swan (hansa) is a very sacred mythical bird that is an allegorical representation of the pure, untainted divine spark that is manifest within every living being. Sighting the swan is the end of the journey and release from the cycle of birth and death.
This very enigmatic theme was being brought out through carefully crafted mime when like a bolt from the blue, a most unwarranted, weird scream of “there is no time” in English from the background, upon which the artistes on stage go into an agitated flutter disturbed the poignancy of the ongoing dance set to sweet music and Oriya lyric.
Saswat Joshi enters the stage to dance the dark devouring Kaala and this was done to Chhau. Joshi’s body kinetics were a little out of tune with the flighty dance movements though he did all of them with a manifest effort. The Tribhangi posture could have been more pronounced in the group dances at least to justify the festival which was presented at New Delhi’s Kamani auditorium.
