Renowned Odishi dancer and founder, Odissi Vision and Movement Centre, Kolkata, Sharmila Biswas’s Aim for Seva fundraiser, ‘Antar-Yatra, the Journey Within,’ was breathtakingly beautiful. It brought together three classical dance forms — Odishi, Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam — to present a spiritual journey into the inner world of the women dancers of India. It was part-mythological, part-historical, part-narrative, part- abstract visualisation that was sumptuously colourful and dramatic on the outside and layered with nuances inside.
Sharmila as a de-glamorised and elusive presence anchored the show while the vibrant lead dancers, Lakshmi Parthasarathy Athreya (Bharatanatyam), Amrita Lahiri (Kuchipudi) and Shashwati Garai Ghosh (Odishi) provided the collective energy of the dancing community.
Dance, music and narration, most often in first person as the dancer’s voice, flowed together uninterrupted for about 100 minutes.
The opening was a well-coordinated piece wherein the young dancers came together representing their respective styles while resonating with the others. From the contemporary, ‘Antar-Yatra’ travelled back in time to the Puranic Age and the churning of the ocean, when apsaras, the celestial dancers, appeared. The supporting dancers, now churning the ocean to tribal beats and now as beautiful apsaras drenched in rich, blue lighting, filled the space with energy, as Sharmila, the narrator, watched in awe. The narration summed it up: “I believed in the apsara. We did. She did. It flowered, filled my heart…”
From the mythological genesis of the dancers, it moved to a historical perspective with the devadasis; the lead dancers were now in plain, draped costumes. ‘… lifelong bondage, lifelong freedom… wife of god…I am the chosen one… Allow me to write my name in your heart…’ Sharmila entered with a life-sized puppet to, ‘Munnavane,’ a song asking the devadasis a piercing question: ‘When you have the lord opening his arms for you, would you still go after this ordinary man? When the magical world awaits you, would you still go after the mundane?’ The dancers agonised when asked to choose — the spiritual highpoint of the programme, really. The tone turned religious with a sloka, ‘Hare Murare’. Such powerful words and images peppered ‘Antar-Yatra.’ The dancers’ exploration of their individual journeys in creativity was a vibrant, fluid sequence, perhaps a bit longer than ideal and a bit more abstract than comprehensible, but the outstanding music (Srijan Chatterjee), the innovative props of bamboo blinds dressed up or down with jute and colour drapes (Nandagopal Jana) and the rich lighting (Ramesh Jena) were enough for the rasikas. The artistry in every microcosmic aspect of the production was to be savoured.
One of the many memorable scenes was in the Kuchipudi sequence. As the woman sits dejected after imagining the Raaslila, she hears soft rhythm. It lights a spark in her and she springs to life. All at once, the dark stage came alive with reams of yellow cloth held diagonally across and enveloped in yellow lights; Amrita performed a crisp rhythmic sequence in between the drapes in a poetic visual.
As one dancer took inspiration from colours, another (Lakshmi) took inspiration from sounds. In her journey towards God, the dancer was enervated by sringara, love, as she lost herself in the dance (Paraju thillana), creativity springing from raindrops, animals, et al, until she found the energy from meditation on the Kundalini Chakra.
Whether the context was clear or not, there was an underlying subtext relating to the dancer. If Rama’s hunt for Mareecha in the Odishi segment (Shashwati) could be taken as a man’s quest for the unattainable, a journey towards god, could be extrapolated as a journey in creativity as a dancer found herself.
Art as God and vice-versa are the goals in the never-ending journey towards the unattainable. The final piece referenced this philosophy. ‘I discard the frivolous… In many forms, in many faces... You laugh at me and say, Sundari why do you walk past me?’ Sharmila, more austere, if possible, in a plain green sari and black blouse, placed puppets of Krishna over every screen on a dimly lit stage to a soulful rendition of ‘Sundari kahe mohe sambhasi na jasi’ (Vidyapati) in the background. Action moved to the foreground, where the austerely dressed dancers mirrored the meditative quiet. They described Radha’s physical and emotional surrender to Krishna in the Jayadeva Ashtapadi, ‘Sakhi he.’ “When the time comes, I will be waiting by the roadside, threading the garland which I started so very long…” So the journey continues…
