With Mayurbhanj Chaau, his window to Odisha, he explored space through fluid moves and interesting dynamics. Bharat Sharma was at ease with the city during his troupe’s performance at the Samakala festival held here recently. “I have been to Baripada and Balasore earlier while studying the dance form,” he says. He had trained under Krishna Chandra Naik.
Bharat traces Chaau to 1911 when 64 dancers performed at the Gateway of India during a function to mark the Coronation of the King George V. “So rich is the form that the King of Baripada thought it to be the best gift to the British from his state,” he says.
However, it was his first performance in Odisha and the festival opened with one of the choreographies of his father and legendary contemporary dancer, Narendra Sharma. The mesmerising piece, Flying Cranes, translates the concept of flying birds on their journey to Siberia through fast and rhythmic movements. “This was inspired by a film on Balinese dance that Uday Shankar showed his students and my father was one of them. He had studied under Shankar, at the famous Almora School during the 40s,” he says.
Bharat was groomed in principles of choreography by his father at Bhoomika Creative Dance Centre in New Delhi. He also has a thorough grounding in Kathakali besides Chaau. A full-scholarship from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and fellowship from Asian Cultural Council helped him to train in modern dance, ballet and Jazz techniques.
“Every new form speaks of a liberated soul. Jazz was an answer to English dominance. Contemporary dance too has a distinct style and alphabets of its own,” he says.
Bharat took contemporary dance to an ethereal level with a range of narratives, movements, gestures and abstract forms. “It is unfair to dissect a piece of art. Dance is sheer joy and one needs to enjoy it as a whole,” he says about obvious reference to use of the rich imagery of Kathakali and lucid movements of Chaau in presentations.
The impact of Udya Shankar dance technique can be best seen in his use of lights. “What could better show the treatment with lights than his movie, Kalpana,” he says. For Bharat, light helps a mystery reveal itself while adding depth to the storyline and characterisation.
Over time, he made foray into sound engineering, lighting and even composed music for his own compositions. During his stint at Sarojini Naidu School of Performing Arts in Hyderabad, he embarked on ‘Chaali’, Highway Performance Circuit, in 2001 and again in 2003. He traveled 5000 km in a bus with a group of eminent dancers and technicians across Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh performing and conducting workshops in diverse cultural settings. It was an attempt to evolve a support system for contemporary dance and expand performance opportunities.
Prior to this, he was part of the core group set up by NCERT in 1989 to suggest guidelines for dance education in schools to be incorporated in National Education Policy. He carried it forward from where his father had left during his seminal association with Modern School in Delhi for over three decades where he institutionalised dance education.
Bhoomika recently organised a two-week dance training residency for professional dancers, and offered performances, lecture-demonstrations and workshops for children, youth and audiences in towns and villages of Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh. Bharat had planned a series of events with an aim to extend the reach of dance and its related culture.