Italian-born Odissi and Chhau dancer, Padma Shri awardee Ileana Citaristi returns to perform in Hyderabad after a long gap. Ileana was here last to choreograph for M.F. Hussain's Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities in 2003. She fondly remembers the rehearsals at M F Hussain’s Cinema Ghar and filming in the courtyard of Nizam Palace. “The sequence of dance was for a qawaali song Nooram Ala . About 25 female Kathak dancers, four male dancers who knew both Chhau and Kathak and four Kalaripayattu artists were involved in that shoot for which the music score was by A.R Rehman,” says Ileana.
“Prior to that I have visited Hyderabad and performed at the first Golconda Fort Festival and Taramati Baradari. I return to perform after a gap of many years,” Ileana says in a quick recollection. Winner of the 43rd National Film Award for Choreography in 1996 for Director Aparna Sen’s film Yugant , Ileana has also choreographed for Goutam Ghose’s Abar Aranye , which released in 2003.
Among all the cities Ileana has performed in the country, her favourite is Pune as she has cherished moments from there. “My performance at the Sawai Gandharva Mahotsav in Pune has left treasured memories. The audience there is well-knowledgeable in music and appreciative and people from all walks of life come to the festival,” says the dancer.
Sharing her plans for her performance at Our Sacred Space on November 28, Ileana says that there will be Manglacharnam, Pallavi and Abhinaya . “In the abhinaya , I plan to perform Sharanam , a piece on women from three faiths who attain salvation despite their inglorious pasts,” the dancer says. When questioned about the one piece, she always included in her recitals, Ileana says: “I have been dancing for the last 35 years and there has been no particular piece but it has changed always. For the first phase, it was a composition by Tulu Babu, the next phase was Navarasas on Lord Shiva and the third, current phase, is on the character Eklavya from Mahabharata. I may perform the Eklavya piece at Hyderabad.”
At the workshop on November 29, Ileana plans to teach the language of emotions through the Odissi dance and also the mudras . The dancer who holds a Doctorate in Philosophy with a thesis on ‘Psychoanalysis and eastern mythology’ shares that there are plans to start an Odissi dance school in Hyderabad.
On starting a dance school in Bhubaneshwar than back in the country of her birth, Ileana says: “I am guilty of not starting a dance school there, but after starting it, you need to be there for continuity and may be at a later date hand it to a senior student and keep visiting it regularly to nurture it. Moreover, students from there come here to learn dance for four to five months.” She laments that students here give up dance for careers or marriage.
Coming to the curriculum planned for IIT Bhubaneshwar engineering graduates, Ileana shares that these students are not children and learning Odissi here is something that they may have preferred to do in their childhood and missed. “Here they will learn the style and theory aspects of the dance form. There is no performance but in their third year, the students must compose something to a rhythm or theme given to them,” she says. On being quizzed about her future plans, Ileana says: “To continue to dance and pay back to society in a better way.”
Conferred with the Padma Shri in 2006 for her contributions to Odissi, the charming dancer has written three books - The Making of a Guru: Kelucharan Mohapatra, his Life and Times , in 2001; The Traditional Martial Practices in Orissa , in 2012, and autobiography My Journey - A Tale of Two Births , in 2015.
Ileana also plans to write a textbook on Odissi dance theory that will help students taking an exam. “Currently, students have lot of difficulty in collecting material to study.
They have to refer to various sources and sometimes they don’t get the required material especially for theory,” says a concerned Ileana.
