Orissa Dance Academy’s three-day festival Udayaraga at Bhubaneswar’s Jaydev Bhavan, featuring young dancers of several classical forms, stood out not only for the excellent choice of pan-Indian young talent but also for the after-performance ‘Bahirangam’ sessions enabling active interaction about the items presented by individual dancers. The informal dialogue had performers, members of the audience, critics and rasikas as participants.
Among the pleasant surprises was Sonali Mohapatra’s Odissi in Debaprasad style, the impeccable rhythmic control and natural abhinaya, unexpected in one without any hearing faculty. Crawling on all fours as baby Krishna in “Kede Chhanda janilo Sahi” or transforming into the unsightly Pootana in her dying moments, here was a most unselfconscious dancer. Even while showing the Ardhanari concept based on Shankaracharya’s verses, the seamless transfer from tandav to lasya without ever sacrificing fluidity of motion was praiseworthy. A dancer to reckon with, Sonali would do well to concentrate on shedding a few pounds.
It is amazing, how many Pootana versions featured in the festival. Very Keralite in its mythological emphasis, but beautifully adapted to suit the Kuchipudi tone was Shreelakshmi Govardhana’s interpretation, in her well designed performance format. Her dance as a disciple of late Rattiah Sharma carries all the sensuous charm with that lilting grace and ebullience evident in the tradition as it evolved with the gurus in the Koochipudi village. Far from the evil demoness, Pootana here, for fear of reprisals, reluctantly proceeds on her evil deed. Charmed by the sights of Vrindavan, involving herself in the activities of the cowherdesses, she has all her motherly feelings roused after a glimpse of baby Krishna. Mandodari Sabdam had all the theatrical characterisation showing the frog princess carried away to Lanka by Ravan, whose heart her beauty captured. Knitted into the second item was a brief tarangam, after a fleeting Navarasa. Lakshmi is a fine young talent, deserving of prominent performance space, and full marks to Aruna Mohanty for spotting this talent.
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The two male dancers came out tops. With his presence, aesthetic turn-out of costume, and agile vigour in cleanly etched movements, Pavitra Bhat is an arresting Bharatanatyam dancer to watch. The invocation to Surya “Om Aswadwajaya Vidhmahe”, with the connecting nritta elements based on the “Jhegina Jhegina”
In Gopalakrishna Bharati’s “Vazhi maraikkude” with the ‘low caste’ bhakta bemoaning his fate of having his view of dancing Shiva in the sanctum sanctorum blocked by the large Nandi figure, Pavitra’s involved abhinaya expressing dejection, contrasted by the final wonder of the shifting Nandi enabling a full view of the Lord, touched evocative heights. In the 40 verses of Hanuman Chalisa set to a varnam format, Hanuman’s vaulting physicality and throbbing bhakti came out tellingly in the first half with sparkling jatis. The charanam refrain, in the overburdened virtuosity, lost out in introverted quietude, particularly when switching over to the composer Tulsi Das’ reverential utterances. And in vocalist Rama’s Carnatic gamaka-soaked singing, with far too many raga changes, the Hindi sahitya became blurred.
The other male dancer was Bijan Kumar Palai, with Gotipua and later Odissi training at Odissa DanceAcademy under Guru Gangadhar Pradhan. To Sukanta Kumar Kundu’s music in Keerwani, Hamsadhwani etc, with raised aerial leg postures demanding high balancing, the dancer gave a largeness to movement circumference with great control over body balance.
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The tandav attitudes and energy of both Hanuman in Ramayana who sets Lanka on fire after his encounter with Sita, and of Rudra Mangala Lord Shiva of Ekambara Pitha in his manifestations as Rudra, Mahakala and Nataraja, came off well. If Bijan keeps a tight control over the ‘auchitya’ element without crossing over to the lokadharmi enactment in the Hanuman portrayal, this is a dancer to watch.
Gauri Diwakar was the essence of dignified grace and rhythmic correctness in her Kathak recital, which while incorporating all the nritta intra-forms from thaat to paran subtly brought out the contrasting tones of abstract themes of air and fire in “Samvet”, visualised by Aditi Mangaldas, which with recorded music for an open-ended dance like Kathak, becomes limiting.
Amrita Lahiri’s laudable control over body movements and rhythm in her Kuchipudi recital, with an excellently woven tarangam sequence, in Shiva Tarangam with the Bhagiratha myth and descent of Ganga interwoven, in the crisp and neatly outlined dance profile, carried the Vempati China Satyam /Mosalakanti approach to visualisation of Kuchipudi — different from Lakshmi’s style — showing how living in Bharatanatyam land with its movement geometry has had an unconscious impact on the Kuchipudi gurus who settled down in urban areas. A very refined dancer, the Shiva part, for this critic, in the descent of Ganga, could have had a little more fire. As a Bengali in Kuchipudi, one could understand Amrita’s preference for Desh tillana with interspersed verses of Tagore’s “Escho, shyamala shundoro” on the monsoons, the earth parched for water becoming a metaphor for the Nayika’s thirst for Krishna, but the mix going from tillana rhythmics to Bengali of Tagore did not quite gel.
Odissi dancer Lipisita Dash, in the rendering of the Shankarabharanam pallavi choreographed by late Kelucharan Mohapatra, had commendable balance and grace with supple torso movements. But there being several who also perform the same number, to make the dance a personalised statement, even while doing movements taught by the guru, has yet to evolve. “Krishna Maadhuri” was performed with mobile facial expression. A very skilfully put together production with verses in several languages, each reflective of Krishna in a particular mood, the dance visualisation by Aruna is also very evocative. But whether bits and pieces of well known lyrics put together in a cocktail is not cutting into well known integrated musical compositions with a strong cultural memory, can be debated by purists.
Very true to her Nrityagram training, and very committed, Pavitra Reddy in “Namaskriti” with the full sweeping leg movements of Chhau, and “Sri Devi” with many of its movements inspired by training in Natya Sastra theory, and a mixture of Odissi styles with the Pankajcharan influence also seen, was an example of how Odissi frontiers are being extended by individual choreographers. The recorded music was of the highest quality with each voice and instrument heard without a cacophony of sounds. “Sun maiyya” based on Pandit Jasraj’s Hindi composition evinced some snide remarks by people who sadly fail to realise that Odissi has an identity strong enough not to be threatened by an occasional non-Oriya musical base.
Srjan’s product Gitanjali Acharya is a neat and graceful dancer. But Pradeep Kumar Das’s pallavi in “Raga Sudha Daibat Vibhas” just flowed without a strong musical motif in the refrain round which all passages move giving an identity to the item. And the dance had the same quality of pleasantry leaving nothing but instantaneous visual impression. And I felt that a more challenging abhinaya piece than just the ashtapadi “Lalita Lavanga Lata” could have been chosen for her.