KOCHI: She creates a rainbow on t h e d a n c e floor with her willowy and elegant movements. When danseuse Geetanjali Acharya switches from a gentle mangalacharan to a brisk pallavi, she is at her dancing best captivating her audience with the lissome charm of odissi. In the city for a performance, the dancer from Bhuvaneshwar says her tryst with odissi was a gradual process. “At first I was like any other child learning a dance form, but as time went by I fell completely in love with odissi and it slowly became my greatest passion,” she says. Odissi, one of the traditional temple art forms of India, oozes lasya.
The odissi performance opens with a mangalacharan, an invocatory piece seeking blessings from the gods, gurus and the audience. “We also do a bhumi pranam to beg forgiveness for stamping on mother earth,” says Geetanjali.
What follows is pallavi which is pure dance and abhinaya - a communication through postures and expressions.
The last leg of the performance is moksha where the dancer reaches spiritual heights or salvation through the movements in sync with music.
Geetanjali is fortunate to have got training from the legendary Kelucharan Mohapatra. Now learning the dance form from Sujatha Mohapatra, daughter-in-law of Kelucharan Mohapatra, she says her formative phase as a dancer was under the guidance of the great master.
“Padma Vibhushan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra is no less than God to me. I started learning odissi almost 15 years ago and my experience with him cannot be expressed in words. He treated us like his grandchildren and we were one big and happy family,” she fondly remembers her days with the doyen of odissi.
Geetanjali who has toured many countries including the US, Canada, Germany, Japan and Indonesia says that the response abroad was overwhelming.
“It is a pleasure to know that your art form is acknowledged and appreciated even on foreign shores. Unlike other classical dance forms, odissi is slow-paced. Many foreigners have expressed their desire to learn the dance form,” she says.
The lyrical part used for the performance is Sanskrit, mainly hymns in praise of gods and passages from Gita Govinda. “The theme is always related to gods and goddesses. Fundamentally religious in nature the dance portrays the divine love of Krishna, the tandav of Shiva, the vigour of Durga and so on,” she says.
The dancer says odissi is one art that hasn’t undergone drastic experimentation in the recent times. “It is basically a temple art form performed in front of the deities. Though the stage and settings have changed we follow its conventions. Artists in Mumbai and Delhi have tried deviations from the original form but in Orissa we still stick to the traditional format,” she says.
navamy@gmail.com