A dancer enjoys her or his life through dance and, in fact, dance itself is life, says Odissi dancer Manjushree Panda. She was responding to a question on what motivates her to continue with her passion for dance which started at the age of six. The danseuse is in the city to perform the classical art form at Mudra dance festival being held at Vyloppilly Samskriti Bhavan.
Speaking with a measured pace, the artist, with academic qualifications in sociology, law and film production, apart from Odissi, explains that she could explore other subjects with her knowledge in dance and it enriches her understanding of dance in return. It is perhaps this rationale that works for her in adapting contemporary themes in her dance which uses various mythological stories. ‘’As a person who has performed the plight of Draupadi, a lead female character in Mahabharatham, I understand the trauma faced by women these days,’’ she says.
It is her second visit to Mudra after 2012 and Manjushree says she enjoys performing here mainly due to the quality of the audience. On the upcoming state youth fest and the glamour attached to it, she says Kerala is much ahead in promoting arts at the school-level compared to her home state of Odisha. But when it was pointed out that a number of dance students leave their passion to pursue careers in other fields, she advises the younger generation to focus on the basics of dance to understand life better. “Students will, in fact, stay focused on their dancing career if they start enjoying dance beyond the compulsions of competition,” says the dancer who runs Avantika School of Performing Arts.
It takes 15 years to be a trained classical Odissi dancer, she says. One of her popular performance is ‘navarasas’, that portray vivid delineation of nine moods using mythological female characters.
Trained in Deba Prasad Das School of Odissi which performs the fast-paced ‘thandava’ and slower ‘lasya’ style of dance, Manjushree transforms from Kali to Parvathy on stage. She performed Mangalacharan, Krishna Vandan, Navarasas, Sree Ashtakam at Vylloppilly Samskriti Bhavan on Friday evening.
She will be conducting a lecture demonstration at the same venue on Saturday afternoon on the topic ‘navarasa in nayikas’.