Courtesy three Bhubaneswar-based fabulous male Odishi dancers, the capital city’s annual cultural calendar will be added by a new national dance festival featuring the future faces of Odishi.
The stage is set at the Bhanja Kala Mandap cultural complex for launch of a three-day Nrutya Naivedya Odishi Utsav on Thursday showcasing nearly a hundred young talents from across India as solo dancers.
The festival is being hosted by gifted young male Odishi dancers Pravat Kumar Swain, Pankaj Kumar Pradhan and lingaraj Pradhan, who have already carved a niche for themselves at the international level as dancers and dance trainers.
“While Odishi has gone global attracting huge numbers of aspiring dancers, we have hardly any platform for the young and upcoming. This prompted us to create an exclusive platform for the young Odishi dancers in the land of Odissi,” said Pravat, the brain behind the initiative, who commenced his career as a struggling Gotipua dancer to establish himself as a postgraduate in Odishi dance from the Utkal University of Culture, besides being a popular solo dancer, a promising choreographer, a dance trainer and founder of the Nrutya Naibedya dance institute in the city.
Globetrotter dancer lingaraj Pradhan explained, “Our focus has been on promoting young talents and the marginalised genre of solo dancing. Usually, young dancers perform in groups. As a result, their talent does not get noticed. We hope to highlight such potential talents through this festival as soloists. Since we have suffered a lot to find out stage as solo dancers, we thought of this festival for our upcoming solo dancers.”
lingaraj is winner of the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Prativa Puraskar, the national award for young dancers. He has just joined the State Government-run premiere college of performing arts, the Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya, as a faculty.
The festival will also feature established solo dancers like Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Prativa Puraskar winner Rajasri Praharaj from Bhubaneswar, Madhulita Mohapatra from Bengaluru, Pompi Paul from West Bengal, Sanjukta Dutta-Pradhan from Bhubaneswar, Sarbani Nandy from Tripura besides host Pankaj Kumar Pradhan.
“I am quite excited to watch the budding and brilliant performers in this festival about whom I have heard a lot,” said Sanjitarani Santra, US-based Odishi dancer who will perform in the festival.
“The festival has a special segment to screen new talents. In this section, the budding dancers below the age of 25 will perform in front of jury members comprising Odishi gurus. The top five winners will be awarded at the closing ceremony,” informed Pankaj Kumar Pradhan.
legendary Odishi dancer and actress Minati Mishra will launch the festival while Guru Aruna Mohanty will be conferred the first Nrutya Naivedya Odishi Samman.