The Show Must Go On
Chigusa Kamamasu takes a while to warm up on stage. Three full dance sequences, to be precise. As the Japanese Odissi dancer opens her performance Aradhana, with the customary mangalacharan, seeking blessings of Lord Jagannath, she is visibly shaky. Her brahmris (spins) aren’t neat, and her balance is off. Her efforts to mask her nervousness fall flat, but there is something about her that stops you from walking out of the show by KAI India. It is her determination to go on.
Even when Chigusa forgets parts of the choreography, she keeps moving until she catches up with the music. You can see her thinking, and her ‘effort-full’ performance becomes a testament to her sincerity towards her craft. After all, it couldn’t have been easy for a Japanese ballet dancer of two decades to start her journey all over again in Odissi.
“The posture and the use of inner muscles in ballet are directly applicable to Odissi. Ballet is about becoming a fairy by defying gravity, and moving lightly through air. In Odissi, however, the body needs to be grounded, connecting with the centre of the earth. It took me two years to shift my body’s awareness from upwards to downwards,” the dancer admits.
In 2015, Chigusa enrolled at the Vivekananda Cultural Centre in Tokyo to learn the Indian dance. She moved to Delhi in 2018, and continued her training under Sharon Lowen. She was drawn to Odissi for its kinship with Japanese culture, which has its origins in a nature-based religion that worships the Sun God. “For me, offering dance as
a prayer to the gods is the ultimate form of devotion. Odissi stands out as a powerful dance dedicated to Lord Jagannath,” she says, adding, “The unique torso movements, particularly the side-to-side motion of the waist, generate energy that is a powerful offering to the gods.”
It is, in fact, the lyrical bhangas (postures) that Chigusa is the most adept at. Her skills are on display in the fourth sequence depicting a scene where Lord Krishna is playing with the gopis. She moves her body sharply from head to toe to the rustic beats of the mridangam, before swaying to the mellifluous flute. It is in this segment where she also gets accurately expressive.
Learning to emote has been a journey in itself. “For pieces with abhinaya, understanding the language is the first step. Without grasping the meaning, it’s impossible to convey emotions. To overcome this barrier, I began by studying Hindi, and then, as I started understanding Sanskrit words, I began expressing emotions with proper timing,” she explains. It will be incorrect to call Chigusa an Odissi dancer par excellence. She has quite a way to go, but that doesn’t make her any less inspiring. And, for that, one must watch her perform.