The five-day 24th OMC Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Award Festival concluded here on Sunday.
This year, the Nalco Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Award was conferred on Dr Sachi Das for his contribution to the field of theatre and dramatics and on Lingaraj Behera for Odishi dance on Sunday. Additionally, the Nalco Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Yuva Prativa Samman was presented to four meritorious young artistes in the area of classical dances and Odishi music.
They include Sonali Mohapatra (Bhubaneswar) and Subikash Mukherjee (Kolkata) for Odishi dance, Swati Sinha (New Delhi) for Kathakand and Rohan Suresh Dahale (Mumbai) for Odishi music.
A book namely “Dancing into Eternity”, an endearing view of the multifaceted life and work of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, published by Srjan director Ratikanta Mohapatra was inaugurated.
Srjan opened the evening with Kirwani Madhurima, a neo-classical Odishi dance presentation, scripted by Pt Nityananda Misra to the original music composition of Dr Vyzarsu Balasubramaniam and the choreography of Ratikant Mohapatra. They then presented a special performance ‘Maati’, derived from an inspiring and popular poem by the iconic Odia poet Radha Mohan Gadanayak. The dance choreography was done by Ratikant Mohapatra. The music composition was made by Laxmikant Palit and the script adaptation was by Jaydev Das. Dancers Rajashri Praharaj, Ritu Sengupta, Pragna Parimita Das, Riyanka Chakrabarty, Aishwariya Singhdev, Sipra Swain, Maya Krishnamurty, Preetisha Mohapatra
and Reebdhita Barua presented the show.