Come December in Orissa, and one is dazzled by the array of shiny costumes every Odissi dancer seems to possess, and unfailingly shows off during the busy performance season. One immediately conjures up a vision of happy, well-fed artistry, only to realise that most of the bling, is, sadly, self-financed. Against this bleak landscape, perhaps the sweetest thing about the recent International Odissi Dance Festival in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, was a nondescript sign backstage that read, “Artiste Payment done here.”
This is the fourth edition of an international festival that began in Washington D.C. in 2000, organised by the US-based Indian Performing Arts Promotions (IPAP). This festival was a collaboration between GKCM Odissi Research Centre, Bhubaneswar and IPAP, with heavy government support.
The festival ran eight days, claiming to showcase a thousand dancers in group and solo performances. It opened on December 23, 2011, with an attempt to create a world record and enter the Guinness Book by having over 500 dancers perform together. This dalliance of dance with record attempts began a couple of years ago when a thousand Bharatanatyam dancers performed in the courtyard of the Brihadeeswara temple in Thanjavur. It is reported that 555 Odissi dancers were present during the record attempt at Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar. In the aftermath of the event, there were noises about the absence of top government officials and the chief minister. Nothing much, however, about the tenacity of over five hundred dancers, mostly young, who rehearsed under the unrelenting sun for days because they believed it would bring Odissi much glory. While the focus is mostly on fame and the impending world record, few have stopped to appreciate the effect this event has had in bringing together a community, however marginally — the dancers were introduced to different styles and repertoires of Odissi as a fused representation of the dance form took shape.
While one commends the attempt to include as many artistes as possible, eight days of day-long
Odissi, with most programmes running over schedule, constitutes a heavy overdose. As a result, the first few morning performers usually performed to a near-empty Rabindra Mandap. The mornings and some part of the evenings were reserved for young and less-established performers. Right after lunch, there were seminars held at the Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya campus.
The young dancers acquitted themselves remarkably well and have hopefully silenced those who say that it is hard to interest the youth in dance. During a private conversation, an organiser revealed that the next festival also hopes to evolve a sustained support structure for underprivileged artistes. A few choreographers presented abstract tala-based works that used the rhythms and cadences of Orissa’s various percussion instruments, including the mardala and khol. One privately rubbed one’s palms together in glee when a Malaysian choreographer boldly rearranged a traditional pallavi to depict four celestial maidens trying to distrupt a meditating ascetic. This seemed especially relevant when seen in the context of the debates that ensued during the seminars.
In a panel discussion on the aesthetics of Odissi, senior dancers remarked that many dancers showed or followed stiflingly similar trends in costume, jewellery and even dancing. They also highlighted what they felt were disturbing changes in posture, having seen dancers unnaturally puff their chests and jut their hips out in opposite directions to — create an impression of deeper tribhangas and cleaner lines. Another interesting session was the one on dance injuries, which traced injuries to wrong alignment for instance, pushing the ankles outwards into a straight line to achieve the perfect chowka or square stance, and to hollow flooring, which cannot absorb heavy footwork well and impacts the dancers’ knees instead. This session ended with a lively discussion on exercises that help strengthen specific muscles; various dancers put their heads together to highlight three or four separate groups of muscles in the thigh that could dislocate the knee if not worked on simultaneously.
Like at most other seminars, the festival paid its due to the question of what constitutes “tradition”. With Odissi — though it is an accepted fact that the dance came into its present form half a century ago, every step forward seems weighed down by an eminently historical burden spanning two millenia. Given that this is yet a constantly evolving form, such discussions definitely echo what is actually happening in dance. The tendency to view Odissi only through the lens of geography and language is somewhat misplaced, given that linguistic boundaries are often porous; go south of Puri and you might encounter villages that are more at home in Telugu than in Oriya.
Though the broader reality is that so-called strictures are negotiable; at the last Odissi festival in 2006, a dancer was heckled for performing a piece based on a Tagore work. Now with the government generously doling out grants in the name of the great literatteur, many dancers have discovered a newfound love for the profound depth of his works. Meanwhile, the hecklers have disappeared.