NEW DELHI: He couldn’t find a way with words so he went around them. When alphabets turned against him because of his dyslexia, he started exploring the vocabulary of movements. Vinod Kevin Bachan, an Odissi exponent, who is performing on July 1 at India International Centre, is an eternal optimist. He didn’t see his learning weakness as a disability but rather, focused on his impeccable dancing ability.
When tunes of Indian classical music were played by his grandfather, as Bachan was growing up, he would dance to them with abandon. Kuchipudi was what he committed himself to learning when he was a teenager but Odissi was his destiny. “At 20, I was lost about what I wanted. Dance gave me something to build my confidence on,” he says.
His path brought him to India from Trinidad and Tobago. It wasn’t an easy decision to leave home. Determination was his ultimate elixir for triumph. He wanted to prove that men can dance as beautifully as women, and along the way, he proved that.
For his upcoming performance, Bachan will present choreographies of his guru, Padmashree Ranjana Gauahar. It opens with an Arya Samaj bhajan. Then there is Ardhanarishwara, a well-received choreography piece by Gauahar. It’s spun around the union of Shiva Parvati and their attributes.
In another piece, Meera Bai’s lyrics have been used in a composition that sings the glory of the sublimity of nature.
Then there is Darshan based on episodes from the Bhagvad Gita showing Lord Krishna’s revelation of his universal form to the anguish-stricken Arjuna at the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
All this has been a result of relentless practice and patient understanding of how Odissi can lend itself to such wide-ranging expressions. His guru has played a huge part. In their guru-shishya parampara, the disciple learns as much as the teacher. The thing his guru learnt from him was loving and laughing more. “On my part, the one thing she does that I greatly admire is that she hugs all her students, thereby giving us a sense of belonging,” he says.
The two of them spend the entire day together. He assists his Gauahar by teaching young kids who come to learn at her institute called Utsav Ranjana’s Dance Academy. Then he practices till late in the night.
To learn Odissi, he says, a teacher must fine-tune their mental frequency to that of the student. His guru have him this piece of advice that he saw later, turned out to be extremely powerful.
Once a union has been established, movements flow from a liberated state of being, the very source from where dance flows. Good to know: July 1, at 6.30 pm, C.D Deshmukh Auditorium, India International Centre.