Sitting across danseuse Madhulita Mohapatra, it’s difficult to miss the passion in her voice and the spark in her eyes when she talks of Odissi. The mere mention of the dance form lights up her face and adds rhythm to her petite frame. Hailing from Bhawanipatna in Kalahandi district in the western part of Odisha—it is perhaps natural for Madhulita to be drawn to Odissi. Bhawanipatna has countless temples and Odissi is known as the original temple dance form.
Most Odissi dance lovers would know that its earliest form is nearly 1,000 years old when Maharis or rather devadasis would dance exclusively for Lord Jagannath at the temple in Puri. But as the dance form came out of the temple, the Gotipuas (young male dancers in female costumes) were the first ones to perform Odissi publicly. It was not until 1955 that its revival by the three famous gurus began to shape what is known as Odissi today.
“Since childhood, I was drawn to dance. It was Guru Shri Bhimsen Sahoo who initiated me into Sambalpuri folk dance, but I always dreamt of learning Odissi. Unfortunately, Bhawanipatna did not have much scope when I was a child,” she rues.
But that did not stop this feisty young woman, who would risk her father’s ire and secretly keep attending her dance class. When Madhulita was 19, an Odissi institution finally opened in her hometown. Proving that age is just a number, and passion and diligence are all that matter, she plunged into learning what she had been craving all along.
“When Guru Shri Krushnachandra Sahoo moved to Bhawanipatna from Bhubaneswar, I started learning under him. It was a dream come true. After three years, I moved to Bhubaneswar for further studies. There I joined the Odisha Dance Academy and started learning under the guidance of Padma Shri Guru Gangadhar Pradhan, Padma Shri Guru Aruna Mohanty and Guru Pabitra Kumar Pradhan,” she says.
The fact that her parents laid stress on academics did not deter her. She balanced her education and later a job along with her dance. Later, thanks to the encouragement from her husband, she quit her job and focused on her dance, continuing to learn from Aruna Mohanty.
Today, Madhulita runs a flourishing dance academy—Nrityantar in Bengaluru—to promote and popularise Odissi “in every house in Karnataka”. It is over eight years now and the danseuse, who is now a renowned teacher—she refuses to call herself a ‘guru’—with over 200 students across Bengaluru, says, “My shifting to Bengaluru has helped me concentrate on dance. The city’s dance community has been very kind, encouraging, and supportive. When I started teaching, the children were not familiar with Odissi. Now, most of our Odissi enthusiasts are local Kannadigas, Tamils and Malayalis. I wish to serve Odissi till my last breath.”
Ask her about her achievements, and she says that the field is so big and the art is so deep that there is a lot to learn. “Dance for an artist is worship of the divine.”
Having performed across the country, as also abroad, this humble artiste says that Odisha is her favourite stage, and adds that since it is the land of Odissi and Lord Jagannath, the performance there has a divine element and is a blessing.
The Dance Form Performance repertoire of Odissi sequentially includes an invocation followed by nritta, nritya, natya, and moksha. Odissi developed in the 17th century under the patronage of King Ramachandradeva.
The 18th century saw emergence of colonial rule followed by the establishment of British supremacy in the 19th century. Such developments saw decline of various classical dance forms, including Odissi. As the Indian freedom movement progressed during the early 20th century, an effort to revive Indian culture and tradition became strong.