The annual International Odishi Dance Festival, hosted here by the Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Odissi Research Centre (ORC) at the Rabindra Mandap here, was inaugurated on Wednesday evening. Into its 16th edition, the five-day festival, organised every year from December 26 to 30, has been a permanent feature in the cultural calendar of the State Government.
The festival this year has dancers from eight countries, Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Russia and the USA, besides a large number of dancers from India including host Odisha. Nearly 400 dancers are scheduled to perform. The inaugural evening kicked off with an impressive solo performance by well-known dancer, choreographer and guru Aruna Mohanty who staged Sansar, her own choreography, that depicted the never-ending journey of life in the cycle of birth, childhood, youth, old age and death and how the only way to escape the cycle was liberation through surrender to God.
Though Aruna was the obvious and principal attraction of the evening, the session also witnessed fascinating performances by two brilliant male dancers, Rahul Varshney from Delhi and Suraj Subramanyam from Malaysia who was featured in a duet with January Low, a gifted dancer familiar to the Odishi circles unlike her co-dancer. Both belonged to the distinct Guru Debaprasad Das style of Odishi. While Rahul has been groomed by Jyoti Srivastav and currently trained under Guru Durga Charan Ranbir, Suraj has been a disciple of Ramli Ibrahim at his Sutra Dance Theatre in Kuala Lumpur. Japanese dancer Soyo Omachi, disciple of Guru Ratikant Mohapatra, also offered an impressive solo recital.
Among others, Mamata Satapathy, Kakali Paramguru, Sanjit Kumar Pradhan, all from Bhubaneswar, and Sarbani Sen from Kolkata performed solo while Ananyaand Isha from Cuttack-based Gunjan Dance Academy staged a duet. The concluding presentation of the evening by the Chhandak troupe from Indore was neat and impressive.
Secretary of the Department of Language, Literature and Culture Manoranjan Panigrahi welcomed the dancers. Director of the department Bijaya Kumar Nayak stated that Odishi has become a unique identity of Odisha worldwide. ORC Chief Executive Sangita Gosain informed that the performances of the festival are being documented and preserved in the ORC archives for research on the changing trends in Odishi dance. Former ORC Chief Executive and Odishi music Guru Ramahari Das and noted mardal Guru Dhaneswar Swain also addressed the inaugural ceremony.