The art and its Odissi

When Protima Gauri took on a piece of land, she envisioned a space where one could live and breathe dance. Thus, Nrityagram was born. Twenty-five years later, that powerful legacy thrives, continuing to enthral audiences across the globe with spectacles that need to be seen to be believed.

Choreographed by the prolific Odissi exponent and school’s artistic director, Surupa Sen, this year’s calendar begins with Sriyah presented by Bhoomija on January 15 at MLR Convention Centre. Bijayini Sathpathy, the director of the gurukul tells us what to expect.

This graceful soiree is a power-packed show of solos, duets and group performances by the school’s dancers to a live original score composed by Pandit Raghunath Panigrahi. It’s common practice to use ‘Sri’ at the beginning of a document. Similarly, here, Sriyah means starting from the beginning.

“This is a selection of five pieces beginning from Surupa’s (Sen) first full-length production, Sri – In Search of the Goddess in 2001,” says Bijayini about Nrityagram’s artistic director and choreographer, and also its oldest surviving student. Like any other repertoire of Odissi, this one hour 20 minute performance, will see an invocation, a physical celebration of beauty and form, a celebration of the emotions, finally culminating in a powerful spiritual release.

The sensuousness and lyricism of the movements in Odissi reflects the motifs of the temple structures in Orissa, even as it captures the rhythm of the drums and verses that speak of love, divinity, and union taken from the Oriya canon. “We are not in the land of Odissi, yet, we want people to appreciate the sensuality and peculiarity of the form,” says Bijayini.

Voted as one of the best dances of New York in 2016 by the New York Times, the show will consist of Nrityagram’s other dancers Pavithra Reddy, Akshiti Roychowdhury, Prithvi Nayak and Urmila Mallick along with Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy who will dance to live tunes by Jateen Sahu on the vocals and harmonium, Rohan Dahale on the mardala, Sanjib Kunda’s violin and floating flute tunes by Manu Raj.

“As dancers, our pieces are a journey — it’s the coming together of the physical, spiritual and the emotional and we want our audiences to become our fellow journey makers while experiencing something beautiful in a moment of chaos. We want them to share this moment with us,” says Bijayini who has worked with Surupa to expand the dance vocabulary of Odissi, together developing a style that distinguishes the school and its dancers. Something that is a sight to behold.