It is public knowledge that Ileana Citaristi, an Italian by birth, relocated to Odisha in 1979 to pursue a life in dance under the iconic Kelucharan Mohapatra. Recognised as one of the foremost practitioners of Odissi and Chhau, Ileana holds a Doctorate in Philosophy and spent a considerable amount of time training in traditional as well as experimental theatre in Europe before coming to India.
After rigorous training in Kathakali under Krishna Namboodiri, Ileana reached Odisha, where she also learnt Mayurbhanj Chhau under Guru Hari Nayak and gradually carved a niche for herself through innovative choreographies amalgamating themes and styles of the East and the West.
Since 1996, Ileana has been grooming aspiring Odissi and Chhau dancers at her dance institute, Art Vision, in Bhubaneshwar, besides juggling a hectic performance and lecture schedule all over the world. She is also the first dancer of foreign origin to be conferred Padma Shri.
In her recently released autobiography, ‘My Journey - A Tale of Two Births,’ Ileana recounts her journey and a life well spent in dance. Excerpts from an interview, where the dancer speaks eloquently about her choreography:
A lot of your choreography is based on literary works such as Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’, Maya Angelou’s poetry and Japanese haiku. How do you choreograph a piece and where do you draw your inspirationfrom?
I believe that ultimately, every choreography is autobiographical. Every time we choose a subject, we connect consciously or unconsciously with our past experiences. That’s why it is difficult to establish at which point in life a particular composition has its beginning and from where it draws the inspiration. The incubation period of an idea varies according to what life offers along the way. Different subjects have different stories behind them. For instance, a friend of mine spoke to me about his research on the myths and legends connected with the course of the river Mahanadi. This is how I got inspired to compose the production ‘Mahanadi…and the river flows’ as a homage to Odisha, for all that I have received from this land all these years.
When I choreographed ‘Karuna’ inspired by Mother Teresa’s life, it was the image of a frail woman coming out of the safe environs of a convent, far away from the comfort of a community in a foreign land, alone towards the unknown, accompanied only by her strong faith. It haunted me and propelled me to compose the piece.
My latest choreography, ‘Siddhartha,’ is inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel, which in the early 1970s inspired a whole generation of young people in the West on their spiritual journey. Those were the years when all of us were looking towards the East for explanations and directions and authors such as Hesse, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg and D.T. Suzuki, were our guides and inspiration.
You have also choreographed for films. Your work in Aparna Sen’s ‘Yugant’ got a National Award in 1996. Tell us about your experiences/insights gained from working in cinema.
In Aparna Sen's ‘Yugant’, my first film project, the female lead is a dancer and choreographer, sensible to the events around her and reacting to them through her dance compositions. Besides having to compose few sequences, which a lead actor had to perform, I had to also conceive two thematic group compositions - on issues such as the Gulf war, losses suffered by the farmers due to the construction of dams and the consequent floods caused by them. I blended Odissi with Chhau. I was also given a Bengali folk song, a sort of lament of the farmers, describing their plight. I had composed the entire song, but finally what was kept in the film, was only a small part, shown from an open window. I felt the intention of the choreography was completely lost. I was not shown the rushes of the film and had been kept out from the final editing and mixing. I saw the entire film much later and thought the space given to the dance sequences was too less in comparison with the length of the film. I made this observation to the director but she said that more dance would have disturbed the flow of the story! I learnt quite soon that you can’t become too sentimental towards your creation when you work for films, because your baby does not belong to you! My second experience was ‘Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities’ directed by the painter M.F. Husain. The dance sequence was for a qawaali to be shot at night during a wedding. I had heard the music only once, four or five months before the shooting and had been given the text of the poem, a lyric inspired by a Sufi mystic, well in advance. The director wanted something based on the whirling movements of the Sufi dancers but conceived in a creative and innovative way. I decided to work with three styles -- Kathak, Chhau and Kalaripayattu. We had two and half days before shoot. The number of dancers I had assembled turned out to be too less for the huge courtyard at our disposal. So, I added more dancers I finally had about 25 female Kathak dancers, four male dancers who knew both Chhau and Kathak, and four Kalaripayattu artists. While the structure of the choreography was built in a relatively small space indoor, a good part of it had been worked out on location itself. The original dance sequence, about six minutes long, was completely subverted during the shooting. I was worried that there would not be continuity between the end of a dance sequence and the beginning of the next one in the final result, since the position of the dancers and that of the camera kept changing.
But Santosh Sivan, the cinematographer, told me that I should not worry about that because in films, that kind of continuity was not required.
You are a writer as well, and havewritten penned about your guru and the martial arts practices of Odisha rissa and now, your autobiography. Is it the a culmination of a long careerlife?
When I decided to write my autobiography, it began as a pastime. I wrote only while travelling. I would not say it is a culmination; perhaps, more a sort of self-examination. Besides, many people were asking me to put down my experiences. I wrote it like a sort of diary, in a simple and straightforward manner. I hope it will be understood as such.
Writing Guruji’s biography (The Making of a Guru: Kelucharan Mohapatra, his Life and Times) has been another learning experience for me. I could connect with many personalities of the past who played key roles in giving Odissi the shape that it has today. My other book ‘Traditional Martial Practices of Odisha’ is a sort of report about the field research on the Paik akhadas which I did about 15 years ago under the aegis of the IGNCA. My interest was to analyse the different passages between the mock fighting of the Paik training and the full-fledged Chhau dance derived from it.
What do you think about the contemporary state of classical dance in our country?
The number of exponents or aspiring practitioners in classical dance has increased in the past 30 years. With the result, the stage is overcrowded. Today’s dancers don’t get the scope to prepare themselves for solo programmes of the length of two hours or more, since the average time allotted nowadays is between 15 to 40 minutes. Group productions are more in demand, so the teachers have to devote more time creating and rehearsing group choreographies and have less time to groom individual talents. Moreover, the media channels are replete with reality shows, full of dances movements which are merely technical virtuosity and very far from the holistic concept of total dedication and commitment inherent to classical dance. In spite of alls this, creativity in classical dance is very much alive and the number of compositions and subjects dealt with has increased significantly. Also the demand for classical dance teachers is growing and this gives a sort of financial stability to exponents. The introduction of classical dance and music training in Government run schools is also a welcome step towards the propagation of the classical idioms.
