Showcasing nearly a hundred Odishi dancers from seven Indian cities like Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Amaravati (Maharashtra) and Bengaluru and one from Japan, the annual Bengaluru Odishi Utsav was launched in Karnataka’s capital city on Saturday last. The two-day event was hosted collectively by a committee of the city’s Odishi institutes.
“The objective of the Utsav was to celebrate the phenomenal growth of Odishi dance in Bengaluru. After Bhubaneswar and Kolkata, Bengaluru has the largest numbers of Odishi dancers and institutes at present.
Though Bharatanatyam has been the most popular Indian classical dance style here, this South Indian city has accorded a warm welcome to Odishi dance. As a result, the number and popularity of this eastern Indian dance form is growing at a faster pace in Bengaluru,” explained festival director Madhulita Mohapatra, who hails from Kalahandi district and is settled in Bengaluru as an established Odishi dancer in last nine years.
“Apart from all Odishi dance institutes of the city, we also made an open invitation to Odishi dancers and Odishi institutions from all over India to join the first ever exclusive Odishi festival and we got very encouraging response. The idea was to develop a bond between Bengaluru’s Odishi community with the dancers from the rest part of India. We were touched a lot to have senior Odishi dancer Sachiko Murakami from Japan joining us this year,” Madhulita added.
The focus of the festival this year was new choreographies by the new generation choreographers from across India.
“I was impressed by the pool of budding and young talents from various parts of India that the festival presented as solo performers besides the choreographies of some of our young dancers. I wish this to be an annual affair; so that Bengaluru’s Odishi community gets an opportunity to see talents and choreographies from other parts of the world while showing them our own talents and work,” observed Bengaluru’s senior-most Odishi Guru Sharmila Mukherjee, disciple of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, who made Bengaluru her home more than a decade ago.
“We were touched by the hospitality that we received in the city. Some of the Odishi dancers came forward to invite home the visiting dancers and delegates. Guru Devjani Sen took us home while we had planned to stay in a hotel. This sense of solidarity among the Odishi community was boosted by the festival,” acknowledged Shaily Chatterjee and Isha Das from New Delhi.
Six-year-old Odia kid Anjeleena, a child prodigy and disciple of Madhilita Mohapatra, opened the festival as the youngest performer of the event.