The capital city’s connoisseurs of Indian classical dances got a special treat with the just concluded Barnali Dance and Music Festival. It was hosted by the city-based Rudrakshya Odishi Foundation at the Bhanja Kala Mandap. Captivating performances by a number of male dancers was the highlight of the event.
The two-day festival, that concluded on Wednesday evening, showcased four young and gifted solo dancers of Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi and Kathak dance traditions - Satyajit Debnath from Khairagarh University and Manojit Saha from Kolkata (both Bharatanatyam), Kuchipudi dancer Amarnath Ghosh from Chennai and Kathak dancer Bishal Dutta from Kolkata. Host Rudrakshya also premiered its latest production “Chakrabyuha” with its eight well-groomed male Odishi dancers.
“I deliberately featured the maximum number of male dancers in my festival because male dancers in Indian classical dance styles are much marginalised. Despite being fabulous dancers, most of them end up being dance teachers due to lack of performance opportunities. When I was a young dancer, I hardly got any scope to come on stage.
Even the girls would enact the male characters like Krishna! This trend had shocked me the most and I had decided then to do my best for promotion of male dancers,” revealed Rudrakshya founder and festival director Guru Bichitrananda Swain who is known world-wide as a fabulous choreographer and who has groomed the largest number of male dancers in Odishi besides doing path-breaking research into purush-ang (male body) in Odishi dance.
“Barnali festival was launched 15 years’ ago with the objective to present new choreographies and new talents in Indian classical dance forms. Music was added later on to the festival. As the title suggests, Barnali is a colourful canvas of dance and music,” Guru Bichitrananda added.
“Chakrabyuha” that was staged during the festival and received rave response from the audience was the tragic and touching story of the valiant boy Abhimanyu from the Mahabharat who was killed unethically by seven stalwarts. It was made possible with the production grant from the Ministry of Culture, the Guru and choreographer acknowledged.
The principal attraction of the festival was an Odishi duet by mother-daughter duo Madhusmita Mohanty and Tanisha Tanushree from the city-based prestigious Odisha Dance Academy. Interestingly, the story they enacted was about mother Yashoda and kid Krishna. “It was a special feeling to enact the real-life experience on stage with my own child,” shared Madhusmita, winner of the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Prativa Puraskar from the Central Government for Odishi dance.
A captivating concert of tala-vadya (an ensemble of percussion instruments) was staged during the closing evening led by young mardal player Ramachandra Behera.