It has been 16 eventful years since Protima Bedi alias Gowriamma, left on her fateful Himalayan yatra, never to return. Proving the adage that absence makes hearts grow fonder, in the dance school she established in Hesaraghetta village on the outskirts of Bengaluru (a Sisyphean task accomplished with dogged determination), Protima’s Odissi-possessed spirit would seem to live on.
In the festival mounted by Nrityantar Academy of Performing Arts under Odissi practitioner Madhulita Mohapatra, watching the performance of Nrityagram’s junior ensemble trained under Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy, reinforced the feeling that Protima had not toiled in vain — to establish a home for Odissi in Karnataka. The mushrooming Odissi schools and the enthusiastic turnouts for programmes prove that the seeds sown by Protima and late Chief Minister of Karnataka Ramakrishna Hegde, who leased government land for art, have borne fruit, for Bengaluru has embraced Odissi with warmth.
While classical dance is much more than just body language, immaculate technique forms the foundational starting point, and seeing the disciplined young ones executing the chowka, the tribhanga, the jumps, the hand gestures, the torso isolations, the minadandi walk, one could not but marvel at each genuflexion of the body being etched in such finished accuracy, visible even in the youngest performer’s movements. The nritta segments spun into the “Tajhenu Ta Ta” refrain in Mohanam, and also the Shankarabharanam pallavi — all set in Surupa’s inimitable choreography — introduced the performer to different rhythm and movement patterns of the dance vocabulary while also imparting a keen feel for group spacing on the stage. The “Kadachit Kalindi....” prayer to Lord Jagannath, the “Manikya Veena” verses showing the Matanga Kanya and veena playing Saraswati and the delicately lyrical “Murali payin chaha” — all creations of Surupa’s dance visualisation, with the striking finale of the imaginatively choreographed Dasavatar, based on verses from the Gita Govind, “Pralaya payodhijale...” were proof of the young disciples being put through the mill by hard taskmasters, intent on getting the best out of them.
Above all was the attitude to the dance, the sheer bodily joy evident even in the five- and six-year-olds. The process of mastering the alphabet of a technique, before moving on to words and then sentences and dance narratives was demonstrated by the young ensemble the next evening at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan auditorium — the event mounted by Nrityagram as a homage to Protima on her death anniversary. As five disciples — Akshiti, Shravasti, Prabha, Prithvi and Urmila (a resident of Boston who comes every year for a two-month residency at Nrityagram) spoke briefly about their training experience, one noticed that the individual in each had not been erased.. Sparsely attended, the seminar on “Odissi outside Orissa’’ with R.K. Usha moderating, sparked some lively moments. Answering this critic’s argument on the inevitability of change with myriad manifestations of a dance being practised cross-culturally, Kedar Misra, poet-art commentator from Odisha, argued that as one who firmly believed Odissi was part of his Odiya ‘culture’, liberties of distortions of myth pertaining to the Odisha region in Odissi productions of foreigners could not be tolerated. As a matter of fact, Odissi’s ‘classical’ status was contested by an Odiya scholar who could not accept what the committee with no Odissi specialist as member had sanctioned! He also cited late Sanjukta Panigrahi working with the theatre wizard Eugenio Barba, refusing to follow his directions involving kicking a book for “in her culture books were revered as sacred”. Sunil Kothari spoke of the early days of the reconstruction of Odissi, screening snippets of Gotipua and Sanjukta’s dance. Bengaluru’s Vijay Sayee, citing some deplorable examples of dance writing, touched on the “futility, utility and credibility”. Ashish Khokar, talking about “space created for dance writing through his annual journal Attendance ,” mentioned his latest edition having to be called Telugu traditions, for what had been planned as “Andhra traditions” became a misnomer with the splitting of Andhra Pradesh.
Interpretative OdissiOne of the most heartening aspects of the first day’s fare was to see some evolving Odissi interpretative dance. After the vigour of the sabdaswarapatha on Krishna in the mangalacharan, Leena Mohanty’s pallavi in Madhyamavati, in keeping with the raga (Megh in Hindustani) visualised the music through a context of monsoons. Instead of abstract dance, one saw typical monsoon imagery, with the peacock dancing in joy and the nayika lifting her veil in sringar glances.
But the best mimetic part was the Brahmargeet taken from the 10th canto of the Bhagavatam wherein the gopi addressing the bumble bee “Madhupahi tora bandhu....” asks whether friend Krishna reflects on his days with the gopis. The bee which takes the honey from the flower and flies away becomes a metaphor, for Krishna who played and stole the hearts of the gopis, and vanished from Vrindavan. The tenor of the interpretation, based on Gopalchandra Panda’s evocative music, had no repetitive passages and Leena’s involvement was total. An area which needs some thought is her facial make-up, which would be more flattering by accentuating the eyes and playing down the mouth and lips.
The other mature abhinaya presentation pertained to Kavita Dwibedi’s performance of “Shweta Mukti”, portraying five women involved in the story of the Buddha seeking their individual salvations. The work rests on the strength of Kedar Misra’s research and poetry selection from myriad sources with links provided by his own verses and the very powerful music composed by Ramahari Das — perhaps his best effort in recent years — and Averee Chaurey’s voiceover between scenes. Gautami who calls Buddha the “flower of her compassion” finds peace in allowing Gautam to seek his own salvation. Wife Yashodhara lamenting to her sakhi that he could have taken leave of her instead of slinking out from the palace in the darkness of night, seeing a different entity in the Buddha who comes preaching, in supreme sacrifice hands over the son she brings up on her own before she too follows. With the poetry so different in emphasis for each, Kavita’s interpretation was both incisive and subtle. Excellently turned out, Kavita added to the subtly nuanced facial expressions.
