A thunderous tabla tattoos the silence, breaking the darkness with a beat that is at once primal and refined. From the shadows, three dancers surge forward—each step a proclamation of Mayurbhanj Chhau, with its bold legwork and martial vigour. Their bodies slice through the air like warriors, yet their faces soften into fleeting expressions of longing and playfulness. The stage blooms into the royal gardens of King Nala, conjured not by painted backdrops but through the shimmer of computer-generated imagery. The audience is transported into myth.
Then, she arrives. Damayanti. Her entrance is lyrical, almost dreamlike, yet deliberate in its precision. Every tilt of her head, every arch of her brows, every delicate flick of her wrist is an ode to beauty: self-aware, radiant, and regal. Here is Odissi in its purest essence: a dance of devotion, curved and circular, where the body flows like a sculpted bronze idol come to life. As her form intertwines with the dynamism of Chhau, the saga of Nala and Damayanti; one of the Mahabharata’s most tender love stories unfurls before the spellbound crowd. The architect of this synthesis is Padma Shri and Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee Ranjana Gauhar, one of Odissi’s most luminous torchbearers. A disciple of maestro Mayadhar Raut, Gauhar has long been praised for her abhinaya: her ability to transform a single glance or subtle gesture into an emotional crescendo. Dance critic Leela Venkataraman once observed that Gauhar’s work “retains classical purity while carrying a contemporary resonance,” while Manjari Sinha called her productions “deeply researched, layered with a scholar’s sensibility and an artist’s imagination.”
The idea of blending Chhau with Odissi, she recalls, struck her as early as 1990. “I thought it was a novel idea to blend Odissi and Mayurbhanj Chhau for an entire production and not just a small segment,” she says. “Both belong to Odisha, they share the same soil. They are like brother and sister.” She laughs that importing Kathakali from Kerala wouldn’t have worked.
At the time, the vision was too radical to stage. It would wait until 2016, when her son suggested adding digital animation to extend the story’s power. With this intervention, the performance leapt beyond stagecraft: flames roared across giant screens, forests shimmered into being, serpents coiled and writhed, and when Nala cast a handful of water toward a burning snake, the animation rippled and hissed in reply. The dancers, rooted in millennia-old technique, suddenly moved within a world alive with contemporary magic. “The animated background added value to the performance and connected me more deeply to the story,” said Rashi Roy, a Delhi University professor of philosophy, who watched in awe.
Yet at the core of the spectacle lies Odissi itself, a form once confined to the sanctum of the Jagannath temple in Puri. What was once an offering to Krishna, danced by Maharis in devotion, today survives as a classical stage art, but one still anchored in bhakti, in surrender. “Without devotion, Odissi loses its soul,” Gauhar insists. Her Damayanti embodies this truth that beauty is not vanity here, but devotion in motion.
Her journey has never been only about performance. In 1987, she founded the Utsav Educational and Cultural Society, through which she has nurtured young dancers and curated festivals like Sampoorna and Sare Jahan Se Achha. Her choreographic works such as Shringar of Life, Aatmayan, Ritu Raaga are celebrated for exploring themes of mythology, philosophy, and contemporary relevance. She has also authored books and documentaries on Indian classical dance, solidifying her role as both archivist and innovator. And yet, Gauhar is candid about the present state of classical dance. She recalls her own training, when dancers were expected to hold a stage solo for three hours, with nothing but abhinaya and rhythm to sustain them. “Today, everyone is a celebrity on social media,” she sighs. “Parents push children into too many activities. Depth is missing. Serious artists are dwindling because dance doesn’t pay.” She is particularly wary of superficial fusion: “polluting art,” as she calls it where styles are blended carelessly, stripped of their lineage and identity.
That paradox hovers over her own production: Odissi and Chhau are paired with animated visuals. But unlike the chaotic mash-ups she laments, here the technology serves the story; it intensifies devotion instead of eroding it. The music, unchanged for 35 years anchors the entire piece, carrying emotions as clearly as temple bells. “Even today, the music sounds fresh. It conveys emotions without words,” she says with pride.
Every beat of the mardal, every glint of silk costume, every flicker of digital fire converges into something larger than dance alone. It becomes a ritual of recall and reinvention, a reminder that classical art must evolve to survive, but never at the cost of its soul. And at the centre of it all stands Ranjana Gauhar herself; eyes lined in kohl, movements precise, silences eloquent still dancing as though art is the prayer in the temple of the eternal heart as an undying love story by Kalidasa, still believing that true beauty is eternal, and that true art, like devotion, is timeless.