The concluding evening of the 20th Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra Award Festival began with the customary award giving ceremony by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Tourism and Culture Minister Ashok Chandra Panda and School and Mass Education Minister Debi Prasad Mishra.
The award was instituted in the year 1995 with a view to generating a feeling of cultural amity among the performing arts fraternity and acknowledging the excellence and contribution of great artists in the field of dance, music, theatre and cinema. Guru Ratikant Mohapatra, the leading torch-bearer of his father and Guru Kelu Charan’s legacy, is committed to reaching out to the entire globe with all its pristine glory and purity. The Srjan (Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra Odissi Nrutyabasa), founded in 1993 by Guru Kelu Charan, has pioneered the cause of recognising the talents and achievements of individual artists in different art forms.
This year, the award conferred on veteran Odishi Dance Guru Sudhakar Sahoo, noted Tabla player Pandit Umesh Chandra Kar, renowned cinema actor, director and producer Prashant Nanda and theatre personality Niranjan Satpathy.
After the conferment of the award, artists of the Srjan presented ‘Synthesis, Shraddha’, who is affection personified. She is the goddess of confidence, faith, care and conviction. Any endeavour that begins with an aim to achieve a goal needs all these qualities. To succeed in accomplishing the objectives, the Rig Veda invokes goddess Shraddha. The artists’ concluding item was ‘Kubjaa’, a neoclassical innovation in dance. The choreography of this mythological presentation was by Guru Ratikant Mohapatra; the music was composed by lakshmikant Palit and the script prepared by Nityananda Misra.