Speaker Feature
Odissi Research Seminar: Abstracts
Day 1:
Krittika Mondal: The Flexibility of Form: Moulding the Gotipua body
Gotipua is widely known as an allied form of Odissi, often attributed to be the keeper of the tradition amidst the decline of the Mahari dance form in the 20th century. Unlike Odissi, it has never been a mainstream performance despite its widespread popularity and ritualistic importance, especially in the Vaishnavite celebrations of Puri. In my research, my main areas of inquiry have been the history of Gotipua, its strict adherence to using the prepubescent body, and its status amongst the people and the State. In this talk, I will discuss how Gotipua and Odissi have historically been informed and transformed by each other. Keeping aside the common elements of Odra Magadhi, what parts of Gotipua were taken while reimagining contemporary Odissi, and why? What has Gotipua taken from Odissi in its modern avatar? And finally, what role did these changes have in maintaining the status quo of the traditions? Through these questions and more, I wish to present a landscape of how Gotipua exists today- a historically religious tradition in the contemporary secular space.
Paromita Kar: Navigating Research into the History and Aesthetics of the Guru Debaprasad Das Style
of Odissi
This presentation shares Paromita Kar’s personal research journey into the history of the Guru Debaprasad Das lineage of Odishi dance, undertaken for her dissertation towards her PhD in Dance Studies between the years 2009-2013. Paromita’s research journey into this style has been multi-sited, based in Odisha and New Delhi in India, as well as in North America, and this presentation looks into narratives, methodological approaches, personal and archival research journeys taken during this process as well as her encounters with numerous first generation disciples of this style of Odishi dance in Odisha, New Delhi as well as North America.
Sabina Sweta Sen-Podstawska: A Sensory-Somatic Paradigm from Odissi Dance and Beyond
Drawing from my research on sensory-somatic awareness and experience in Odissi dance, I will share about this sensory-somatic paradigm and discuss its application, particularly in generating embodied sensory knowledge, meaning, and feeling in learning and dancing Odissi’s nṛtta items. I see the nṛtta items as fertile ground for thoughts and feelings that become an enactive phenomenon as the dancer generates meaning through the act of psychophysical sensing along with dancing. I will also try to partly speak about how I incorporate this sensory-somatic approach to Odissi dance in my ongoing collaboration with Cree theatre director and cultural leader Floyd Favel from Poundmaker Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, in developing a contemporary Indigenous theatre methodology, thus extending the application of this sensory-somatic paradigm from Odissi dance into other movement based performances.
Day 2:
Aparna Nambiar: Odissi Mutations: Singaporean Reterritorializations of the Pallavi
For Odissi adherents around the world, the sanctity of its mid-twentieth-century repertoire, constituted by the choreographies of prominent Odissi gurus, Kelucharan Mohapatra being one of them, is of paramount value. Between 2015 and 2020, Singaporean choreographer and dancer Raka Maitra conceptualized three works under the title The Pallavi Series, pulling apart and reworking guru Mohapatra’s Pallavis to restage the Odissi form for cosmopolitan Singaporean audiences. As the cultural capital of Indian dance forms in Singapore’s racially coded society lies in their adherence to tradition, Maitra created this work in response to repeated admonishments from her Singaporean funders that her work as a contemporary Indian choreographer was illegible as an “Indian” style. In a subversive move, Maitra presents the Pallavi Series as an experiment in performing classicism, calling out the Odissi dance form’s roots not just in age-old practices but in a modern assemblage of diverse theatrical, corporeal, and musical forms with precolonial roots. Part-adaptation and part-tribute, Maitra’s reworking of guru Mohapatra’s canonical Pallavi Series resurfaces the heterogeneity of influences and inherent nomadism of the Odissi form. This mirrors both Maitra’s own journey of migration as well as the improvisatory musical form of the Pallavi — a melodious elaboration on the rhizomic routes and returns that connect disparate dance, theatrical and conceptual traditions across temporalities. This paper will explore what this Singaporean form of mutated Odissi can add to our understanding of Odissi dancing amidst the complexities of the diasporic Indian experience in Southeast Asia.
Sitara Thobani: Making Space: Dancing Odissi in Global Contexts
As Odissi dancers, our practice begins and ends with the bhumi pranam. For a moment, this salutation trains our focus on the ground upon which we dance, establishing a relationship between our art, our bodies, and the spaces we inhabit. And yet as dancers of a form so intimately tied to specificities of locale - Puri, Orissa, India - but nevertheless practiced in contexts around the world, the question emerges as to both the material and the ideal spaces that we mark and to which we (attempt to) relate. Space, of course, is not simply the setting in which we dance, be it the basement, studio or stage. It is not free of political significance. Space is a context produced by and productive of relations of power, tied as it is to formations of race and nation. I begin by interrogating the relationship that dancers, raised and trained in globalized contexts in India and the diaspora, hold to the spaces in which they perform and which they necessarily bring together. What is the transformative potential, and what are the underlying limitations, of our relationship to space given the various histories and discourses that inform our dance practice? In what ways do our embodied performances and discursive narratives transgress the physicality of spatial boundaries, and in what ways do they enhance these boundaries to give particular conceptualizations of space more concrete form? I build on my earlier research and experiences as an Odissi dancer trained in North America to address these questions, questions that are all the more urgent given the current climate of nationalist resurgence and racial inequity in the multiple contexts in which we live and dance.
Day 3:
Aastha Gandhi: An ‘alternative’ feminine: Dancing Odissi through Guru Surendranath Jena’s compositions
My talk will focus on the approach of portraying the “feminine” in Odissi especially in Guru Surendra Nath Jena’ s compositions and the Odissi body as visualized and conceived by him. After laying down the basic tenets of his style, I will then elaborate on the process of creation and dancing through few of his compositions including Chhaya Jhatak and Chandrika Sundari. I observe and draw an analysis of the Odissi body through decades of training in this particular Odissi style under his daughter and prime disciple, Guru Pratibha Jena Singh. I will analyse the construction of the dances through his specific process of visualizing iconography, text, and technique he employed to create, what I identify as an ‘alternative’ feminine. Anurima Banerji’s (2019) understanding of the ‘distributed body’ will be of particular interest to examine Jena’s conception of the Odissi body. To conclude, I will contextualize Guru Jena’s departure from the revived ‘traditional’ Odissi locating his feminine in the larger history and repertoire of Odissi dance.
Monali Nandy-Mazumdar: Moving experiments
The motivation for my first choreographic foray in Odissi which took place in the Fertile Ground series in Greenspace, New York city, came through my years of training a questioning mindset. As a practicing research scientist, I enquired several aspects throughout the process of this project with an argument that this undertaking will lead to artistic growth and inspire the journey of my creative exploration. Choreographic voices are often not stressed upon in the context of Indian dance until after several decades of rigorous training. Therefore, at this stage of my journey, I strived to entail a detailed process of self-examination and understanding in order to select the narrative. I arranged the concept which resonated personally along with penning poetry to bridge the potential cultural divide on the platform I was performing in. I sought the experience of my teacher in situating the aesthetics and movement vocabulary. With the goal of connecting to the viewership, text, and the dance itself, I concluded this experiment with a performance in an evening consisting of four modern dance pieces with a hopefully imperceptible apprehension. Anecdotal evidence from a post-performance panel pointed out several facets of success and improvements. With the obvious joy of movement, I felt humbled to be able to be with Odissi in a distinctively challenging attempt.
Sriradha Paul: 'Choreography'
The concept of ‘choreography’ in Odissi dance has evolved with time since it got its classical status in the 1950s. In the field of Odissi, the choreography of duet or group compositions often indicates the conscious attention given towards the usage of space or the relationship between multiple dancers in the performance precinct. But it fails to identify ‘choreography’ as an inventive artwork where the choreographer’s thought process and intention are executed through the conscious choices of movements. On this account, this work will explore a contemporary Odissi choreography in progress headed by a Belgium-based choreographer with four skilled individual Odissi bodies belonging to four distinct styles of practice. Based on embodied experience and interviews, the choreographer seems to find the connection between the disciplined body and the pedestrian body using Odissi idioms. How a little shift in the alignment of the spine acts as the boundary/ agent between the disciplined and pedestrian body. How the choreographer seeks to establish this particular Odissi choreography based solely on the strength of the movements grounded in Odissi techniques. The outcome of the work may lead to questions about how these dancers would continue to innovate but would do so in the guise of tradition. How can we understand the persistence in the form, even though change, invention, and renewal are evident in its history? How this choreography can create dialogues between the ideas of tradition and innovation, opening new possibilities for dancers, choreographers and the Odissi audience to discuss the limitations of the problems involving authenticity?Keywords: Odissi, Pedestrian, Transitions, Authenticity and Contemporary
Day 4: Keynote Speakers
Bijayini Satpathy
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
Priyambada Mohanty Hejmadi
Live Performance: Repertoire Descriptions
Deepa Mahadevan: Matangi Dhyanam
Matangi, the goddess of wisdom and success, appears as a dark and luminous presence. She wears a crescent on her head and has three eyes. Seated on a golden throne, she holds in her four hands a staff, a scimitar, a hook, and the Vedas. Her presence pervades over heaven, hell, and Earth. All her devotees humbly surrender themselves at her gracious feet. Choreography: Guru Ratikant Mohapatra; Music: Sri Pradip Kumar Das.
Puspa Panda: Madana Manohara Stotram Madana Manohara Stotram is one of the finest narrative of Srikrishna - Vishnu. Bhakti being its Sthayi Bhava and Choreographer Smt. Meera Das weaves few innovative Sanchari to supplement and strengthen the Sthayi Bhava. In Sanchari she used episodes of Kaliya Dalana, Meera Bai’s complete surrender to Lord Srikrishna and Radha’s love for Krishna. Conceptualized and choreographed by Guru Smt. Meera Das. Music is originally composed by Pandit Maheswar Rao. Later the music is rearranged by Roopak Kumar Parida. Rhythm is composed by Guru Satchidananda Das. Supradipta Datta: Yahi MadhavYahi Madhav is an Ashtapadi that portrays Radha as a Virahotkantita, Viprolabdha and a Khandita nayika. Radha has been waiting for Krishna all night long. When Krishna finally comes to meet her she notices his disheveled hair, from which an earring is dangling and that he has a woman’s scarf around his body. She instantly knows that he has been unfaithful. She chides him in an angry sarcastic tone .... Yahi Madhava Yahi Keshava asking him to leave her alone. She refuses to listen to his pleas as she considers them all lies. Throughout the song, the refrain is: “Go away Madhava, Go away Keshava. Don’t tell me your lies,” as Radha goes through tumultuous emotions of anger, pain, love and disdain. “Yahi Madhava” is set to Jati Taal, a cycle of 7 beats and is based on Raaga Misra Bhairavi. Music composition is by Pandit Bhubaneswar Misra and Dance Choreography is byPadmabibhushan Guru Shri Kelucharan Mohapatra.
Meera Das: Shree Rama Preyashi
When Ravana disguised as a Sadhu picked Devi Sita and carried her away to Lanka to keep her guarded by the demon women in the Ashokabana, Rama Bhakta Hanumaan made his way through far oceans and lands to search for Sita and made his way to Ashokabana where Sita stood is agony and distress. Hanuman approached Sita in the most careful ways not to scare her, but as Sita suddenly had a glance of him she was frightened and taken aback. But when Hanuman showed her the signet ring of Lord Rama she finally was convinced with everything that Hanumaan had to express to her about Lord Rama being alive and how he would come to take her along with him. Hanuman tells sita to give him some insignia of hers for Lord Rama as he sent one for her so that Rama feels the joy of love and rememberence of Sita. Devi sita very thoughtfully realises she only has one ornament adorned that is her Mathamani, the head ornament which she removes and hand over to Hanuman as a token of her love and awaiting her Lord. She sends it in all faith that her lord will see it and come to rescue her soonest.....These verses have been penned by Hanuman Bhakta Sri Gopinath Parida. Choreography by Smt. Meera Das
Aruna Mohanty: Aswasthama
Aswasthama, son of Dronacharya and friend of Kauravas was unparalleled with his valor and art of warfare. Despite this, he was never allowed to fight as an equal because he was born a Brahmin. The battle field was the arena for the Kshatriyas or warriors. He bore the anger and denial silently. As the battle took its toll on the Kauravas, he was given an opportunity by Duryodhana to lead the Kauravas. Ashwathama entered the Pandava's camp in the middle of the night and mercilessly slaughtered the warriors in their sleep, thinking them to be the Pandava brothers. But in the darkness and blinded by his rage he had instead killed the five sons of the Pandavas. Duryodhana rebuked Ashwathama for his reckless actions, leaving Ashwathama consumed by intense rage. Krishn admonishes Ashwathama for breaching war time rules and morality, by killing innocent children in the name of war. He curses him to immortality. "You should live for a thousand years, but as wounded soul. You should not die but live alive wounded in hell." Script: Shri Kedar Mishra Dance; Choreography: Guru Dr. Aruna Mohanty; Music Composition: Guru Ramhari Das; Rhythm : Guru Dhaneswar Swain; Music Accompaniment provided by : Mardala : Guru Dhaneshwar Swain & Guru Bijaya Kumar Barik; Tabla: Shri Ajay Kumar Chaudhury; Vocal : Shri Rupak Kumar Parida; Violin : Shri Agnimitra Behera; Flute : Shri Srinibas Satapathy; Sitar : Shri Prakash Chandra Mohapatra; Keyboard : Shri Bibhuprasad Tripathy.
Maya Kulkarni: ShilpaNatanam
Choreographer Maya Kulkarni’s innovation, “Shilpanatanam” is a new aesthetic approach to create choreography in the South Asian performing arts. This involves choreographic visualization of “Shilpa,” which encompasses all kinds of fine arts and visual arts such as painting, architecture, sculpture etc. “Natanam” refers to movement. “Shilpanatanam” gives life to static imagery. The dance is then a metaphor and moves beyond the sculpturesque quality that is typical of traditional Indian dances. Kulkarni has been working with professional soloists with significant experience in expressive repertoire or Abhinaya. These dancers come from a wide variety of lineages, such as Bharatnatyam, Kuchipudi, and Odissi. Kulkarni is an established artist in the Bharatnatyam genre. However, she makes a creative choice of departing from her own traditional construct. Kulkarni has been presenting works in “Shilpanatanam” since the past decade in prominent festivals in India and the United States. She has also received regional and national grants to develop and present her choreography in a wide variety of venues. “Shilpanatanam” is a creative venture springing traditional movement patterns as well as literary sources of Indian dance. However, Indian classical genre have become quite regimented and structured focusing primarily on devotional and metaphysical literature. Kulkarni opens both the form as well as the conceptual frameworks constricting this domain. She started experimenting with Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” with visual artist/ dancer Mesma Belsare. While this is not the first time Greek themes have animated Indian dancing bodies (Both Kumkum Mohanty and choreographer have experimented with Shakespeare’s tragedies in Odissi and Kathakali respectively), Kulkarni’s take on movement and choreography represents a dancer’s voice not subdued by the pressures of either traditional rigidity or patriarchy. Her vision comes through in this creative process where movement is constantly drawing from other disciplines, such as literary, visual, and plastic arts, yet it maintains its own independent existence. The mover is not dancing to text or to rhythm, which is the characteristic feature of the classical Indian dancing body. But, the dance and the dancer is front and center, not burdened by poetic text or musical composition. Dance creates the story, the text, the narrative that takes the audience along a journey of intense emotional churning. Every movement is uniquely generated that evokes a sensory response in the viewer.
Speaker Bios
Sinjini Chatterjee is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Critical Dance Studies Program at the Department of Dance at UCR. Her research traces the interdependence between Odissi dance and other folk, tribal, and ritualist performance practices of Odisha. She studies how recent choreographic ventures in Odissi might trouble the understanding of ‘classical dance’. Sinjini has trained for 15 years in Odissi dance under the able guidance of Smt. Aloka Kanungo and has performed widely in India and the United Kingdom. At UCR, she has received the Dean’s Fellowship, multiple Gluck Program of the Arts Awards, the Dissertation of the Year Fellowship, and the Department of Dance Graduate Fellowship.
Aastha Gandhi holds a Ph.D. in theatre and performance studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was a Doctoral Fellow at the Temporal Communities Cluster of Excellence program, Freie University, Berlin. Her area of research engages with the circus, networks, laws, and discourses of the performing body. Aastha’s degree in law adds to her research which investigates negotiations of citizenship between state and judiciary, and places the circus at the centre of the debate of child labour and animal rights. She currently serves as the Elected Student Member on the Executive Committee of International Federation for Theatre Research, a Member on Academic and Creative Committee for Circus and Its Others, and is an editor for the Routledge Historical Resources project on Circus and Sideshow in the Long Nineteenth Century (2024). Dr. Gandhi is an adjunct faculty at Ambedkar University, Delhi, teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in performance studies. She also serves as a visiting lecturer at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts where her teaching covers performances and the laws and policies related with art and cultural practices in India. She has been a Teaching Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University (Department of Theatre and Performance Studies) and Ashoka University (Department of Sociology and Anthropology). A performing artist, Aastha has been practicing Odissi dance for over two decades and her choreographic work, performances, and master classes have been hosted in New York, Angérs, Singapore, Belgrade, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Osaka, and Bangkok. She has published a number of peer-reviewed essays on Odissi dance in international journals. Her practice and proficiency in dance has cultivated her understanding towards the performative and phenomenological bodies and the reading of it. These extend into a methodological perspective for her work on circus and other performers and performance genres. She has performed and taken master classes in Hong Kong (2006), Brisbane (2008), Osaka (2008), Angers (2014), Singapore (2015), Bangkok (2017), Belgrade (2018), and New York (2019). In recognition of her contribution to Odissi dance Aastha was bestowed with Pratibha Sanskritik Samman for the year 2014. Her own choreographic works include But on the Box (2007), Between the Lines (2013), We…Women. (2015) and We Women//: Trigger Warning (2017), In the Womb of Time (2020), Ruko/Ruko mat (2023). She is currently working on a dance explorations project on The Other- body of the Migrant implemented by the India Foundation for the Arts. Aastha has presented her research work at various international conferences include IFTR World Conferences (Reykjavík, Galway, Shanghai, Belgrade, Stockholm, Hyderabad); PSI (Hamburg); Circus Histories and Theories Conference (Johannesburg); Circus and its Others Conference (Davis, Montreal), and World Dance Alliance Conference (Singapore, France, Australia, Hong Kong).
Anurima Banerji is Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. She is the author of Dancing Odissi: Paratopic Performances of Gender and State (Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press, 2019), which was awarded the 2020 de la Torre Bueno Prize awarded by the Dance Studies Association. In 2013, her essay “Dance and the Distributed Body,” published in About Performance, received the Gertrude Lippincott Award from the Society of Dance History Scholars. With Dr. Violaine Roussel, she co-edited How to Do Politics with Art (Routledge, 2017). Currently, she is working on a new book project, The Impossibility of Indian Classical Dance, as well as co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Indian Dance with Dr. Prarthana Purkayastha and The Oxford Handbook of Dance Praxis with Dr. Royona Mitra and Dr. Jasmine Johnson. With Dr. Mitra she co-edited a special issue of the journal Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies on “Decolonizing Dance Discourses”. Her writings appear in the journals Contemporary Theatre Review, Economic and Political Weekly, South Asian History and Culture, and Women and Performance, and edited volumes like Planes of Composition: Dance, Theory, and the Global; Moving Space: Women in Dance; the Oxford Handbook of Dance Reenactment; and Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures. Banerji was also part of a team of artists and scholars who contributed to the exhibition A Slightly Curving Place, curated by Nida Ghouse and presented by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, Germany, and the Alserkal Arts Foundation in Dubai, UAE. Banerji has received fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the Hellman Foundation, the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, and the International Research Center at Freie Universität to support her scholarly work. Recently she was a Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. She trained in Odissi dance and is also a poet.
Bijayini Satpathy is considered one of the foremost masters of Odissi in the world, Bijayini Satpathy has spent the last three years exploring her own choreographic path. She was the Artist-in-Residence with the Metropolitan Museum for the 2021-22 season. In 2021, she premiered her first self choreographed work “Abhipsaa - A Seeking” commissioned by Duke Performances and Baryshnikov Arts Center with additional support by NEFA's National Dance Project followed by a US Tour. She was also profiled in the virtual Studio 5 2021 program by City Center. In 2020, she was the NY Dance and Performance Bessie Award Honoree and she was named the Best Solo Dancer in 2019 by Dance Magazine. She has been hailed by New Yorker Magazine for her “exquisite grace and technique”. Satpathy’s passion for Odissi was instilled at age 7 with teachers at Orissa Dance Academy, in her birth place, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. She joined Nrityagram in 1993 after being selected in an audition by the late founder, Protima Gauri, and became the solo debutant in 1997. She studied and perfected Odissi with Nrityagram as a performer, teacher, research scholar and administrator until 2018.
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin is Emerita Professor of anthropology at Smith College and have also taught at Harvard University, Wellesley College, and Wesleyan University. She was a student of Indian classical dance (Orissi style) and did groundbreaking field research among the maharis (temple dancers) of Jagannath Temple in Odisha, India in the mid-1970s. She published the first scholarly book on this subject: The Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri in 1985. Her later field research was among agricultural communities in coastal Odisha. In 1994, she began collaborative work with nongovernmental organizations in Peru and Bolivia. In 2009, Apffel-Marglin founded the nonprofit organization Sachamama Center for Biocultural Regeneration, dedicated to the regeneration of both the local forest and of indigenous agriculture and culture in the Peruvian High Amazon. Apffel-Marglin was a research adviser at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki, an affiliate of the United Nations University, from 1985 to 1991. Apffel-Marglin is the author of ten books, the editor or co-editor of an additional eight books, and the author of more than 70 articles and book chapters. Her interests cover ritual, gender, political ecology, shamanism, critiques of development, and science studies; her areas of research specialization are South Asia and the Amazonian Andes.
Kakali Paramguru, Odissi dancer with master’s degree in English literature, graduated as a doctor of philosophy in dance from Temple University, Philadelphia in Spring 2023. Using literary intertextual theory, dramaturgical analysis, and oral history methodologies, her dissertation Martha Graham and India analyses the relationship between American modern dancer Martha Graham, the unacknowledged presence of Indian aesthetics in her work from the 1920s through 1958, and the influence of Graham on younger Indian dancers creating Indian modern dance between 1964 into the 2000s. She argues that the relationship between Martha Graham and India was not only reciprocal, but strengthened Indo-American relations through several stages of kinaesthetic and philosophical cross-cultural exchange during the twentieth century. Her research interest centers on interpretation of intertextual aesthetics, comparative literature study, problems of identity politics, orientalism, and comparative modernism.
Kaustavi Sarkar, Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, is an Odissi (eastern Indian traditional art form) soloist, scholar, and educator. Dedicated to pedagogical excellence, she serves as the Director of the Arts and Architecture Honors Program at her institution. A two-time NEA awardee, Sarkar dedicates her creative and scholarly practice to feminist and queer research and pedagogy. She is the founder and manager of “South Asian Dance Intersections”, a journal dedicated to South Asian dance studies. Through her “Dance and Community Research Institute”, she employs entrepreneurial measures to build community across practitioners and scholars. Her choreography and scholarship has been featured in Nritya-Darpan, Erasing Borders, American College Dance Association Conference, Dance Studies Association, World Dance Alliance, and Odissi International. Her research foci are Practice-as-Research, religious studies, digital humanities, choreographic research, Indic philosophy, and queer theory. Her monograph Dance, Technology, Social Justice with McFarland Publishers presents a critical theoretical take on dance technique as a technology of social justice. Her performance and practice centering Odissi feature in her upcoming book project Shaping S-Curves under review by University of North Carolina Press. She serves on the board of American College Dance Association and Odissi Alliance of North America.
Monali NandyMazumdar holds a doctorate in Microbiology from the Ohio State University and is continuing her career as a research scientist in the healthcare sector in New York. She has been learning Odissi, the eastern Indian classical dance form, under Dr. Kaustavi Sarkar since the past several years. A keen interest in the art form coupled with intense dedication made her develop a strong love for the Odissi movement. She has participated in numerous dance festivals in the USA as a soloist as well as in ensemble choreographies at the UNCC faculty dance concerts in 2018 and 2023. During the pandemic, she continued to imbibe a holistic view of the arts through her desire to learn various theoretical aspects of Indian classical dance. Having had the opportunity to undertake professional development courses through her teacher’s academic pursuits, she wishes to supplement her practice by publishing her dance research in academic outlets. She is keen on taking her artistic journey further by collaborating with other genres like music and painting which will help explore her choreographic drive while developing new avenues to engage more patrons making odissi accessible to the diasporic community at large. She has developed online practice groups as a part of her interest to include the community of odissi practitioners in daily sadhana and currently mentoring new students in this form.
Paromita Kar is a dance artist currently based in Hamilton and Toronto, Canada. She moved to Canada as an adult, having grown up in India and the United States, and having encountered through training the different aesthetic lineages of classical Indian Odissi dance through her multiple childhood relocations, and remaining a student and practitioner of the Guru Debaprasad Das lineage of this dance form throughout.
Priyambada Mohanty Hejmadi is the pioneer Odissi dancer whose performance in the First Inter-University Youth Festival in 1954 in New Delhi, India, led to the discovery of Odissi dance and drew national attention to this art form. She is the first person to give a full evening Odissi dance performance in Sapru House, New Delhi in 1961 to establish Odissi as a self-sufficient and classical dance form. She has played a significant role in the revival and popularization of Odissi both in India and abroad. She continues to be a leading figure in the present cultural scene. Trained by all the leading Odissi Gurus, she has received many national recognitions, including the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and lifetime achievement honours from the Utkal Sangeet Samaj and Odisha Sangeet Natak Akademi, among others. Her book, Odissi: An Indian Classical Dance, co-authored with her daughter Ahalya Hejmadi Patnaik, and Odissi primer are widely used by dancers and scholars alike; her autobiography, Contours of My Life, was published in 2020. At present she is a member of the National Board of Film Certification. She has contributed significantly to the field of science as well as culture. A zoologist by profession, she has received Padma Shri, India's highest civilian honour from the President of India, for her contributions to Science and Technology. Breaking the gender barrier, she was the first woman Vice-Chancellor of Sambalpur University and the National Law University of Odisha. Currently she is a Fellow of Sigma Xi, the Association of Aquaculturalists, and the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Sabina Sweta Sen-Podstawska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Culture Studies under the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Silesia in Poland. She holds a Ph.D. in Drama from the University of Exeter, an MA in South Asian Dance Studies from the University of Roehampton in London and a BA-MA in English Literature and Culture from the University of Silesia in Katowice. Her publications include research in sensory-somatic awareness and experience, bodymind relations in performance, Indigenous dance and theatre in Canada, and Indian classical dance Odissi. Her research interests also embrace somaesthetics, emotions, psychosomatic experience and enactivism in performance, multiculturalism, transculturalism, multiethnicity, minority and diasporic cultural expressions. As a dancer and performer, she continues her embodied explorations through Odissi dance, crisscrossing disciplines and mediums.
Sinjini Chatterjee is a fourth year Phd student in the Critical Dance Studies Program at the Department of Dance at UCR. Her research traces the interdependence between Odissi dance and other folk, tribal, and ritualist performance practices of Odisha. She studies how recent choreographic ventures in Odissi might trouble the understanding of ‘classical dance’. Sinjini has trained for 15 years in Odissi dance under the able guidance of Smt. Aloka Kanungo, and has performed widely in India and the United Kingdom. At UCR she has received the Dean’s Fellowship, multiple Gluck Program of the Arts Award, the Dissertation of the Year Fellowship, and the Department of Dance Graduate Fellowship.
Sitara Thobani is Associate Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the critical intersections between postcolonial and diasporic South Asian visual and material cultures, and global formations of race, religion, gender and nation. Sitara’s first book, Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities: Dancing on Empire’s Stage (Routledge 2017), examines how diasporic artistic practices serve as a critical site for the mutual constitution of deeply entangled Indian, diasporic and British national identities. She builds on this study in her current research, which explores the relationship between distinct nationalist projects in the transnational context. Her research has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, and South Asian Diaspora. Sitara holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, an MA in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE University of Toronto, and a BA in Anthropology and Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia.
Sriradha Paul is an India based performer specialised in Odissi dance for more than two decades, independent researcher, dance educator and curator. She has extensively performed in India and abroad (US, UK, Sri Lanka, China, Sri Lanka, China, Hungary, Bhutan and South Korea) in solo and group category.She hold a master degree in dance anthropology as an Erasmusmundus scholar in the choreomundus programme and in Geography. She is the disciple of Guru Bichitrananda Swain @ Rudrakshya Foundation and started her Odissi journey under Guru Poushali Mukherjee at the age of five in Kolkata. She has worked with the inmates at Cherlapally jail, Hyderabad and worked closely with the survivors of human trafficking under US Consulate, Kolkata.Her recent interests are in the Indian temple sculptures and the journey from freezing bodies to moving. she is a recipient of Indo-Pacific grant from US Consulate and headed the project and worked with two Indonesian artists. She curated an exhibition in London and performed at Richmix and Nehru centre in London. Currently she is the logistics expert of Choreodance Film Festival funded by ESAA. She worked as an assistant rehearsal director of an off broadway show in New York organised by Surati. Her upcoming work is Pallavi - a contemporary Odissi production commissioned by maghenta and led by Sooraj Subramanium as a choreographer.
Supradipta Datta is an Odissi dancer, teacher and choreographer, based in Houston, Texas. She is one of the senior students of SNA awardee Guru Smt. Aloka Kanungo. She has also trained in Bharatnatyam under Guru Smt. Dipali Roy. During her career she has been blessed to have had opportunities to learn from stalwarts like Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and Guru Pandit Birju Maharaj through various workshops. She holds the rare distinction of earning the Sangeet Kriya Visharad in both Bharatnatyam and Odissi. Over the years, Supradipta has performed in many prestigious platforms both in India and the USA. In 1997, her Odissi was featured by the BBC in their documentary on Indian culture. Supradipta, has collaborated with other renowned artists in several mega productions, noteworthy of which are Chitram (Shri Kanniks Kannikeswaran), Ananta (Smt. Sreyashi Dey and Shri Arnab Bandopadhyay) and Kavya, Dance of the Cosmos and Waking Up Free (Silambam Houston). Though she holds a Master's degree in Accounting and a MBA degree in Finance, Supradipta found her calling in dance. She is the founder/artistic director of the premier Odissi institute of Greater Houston, Kalaangan School of Odissi. It is solely dedicated to the practice and promotion of Odissi (since 2003) through regular classes, workshops by exponents in Odissi and performances. Over the years, students of Kalaangan have performed in many cultural events, festivals and community outreach programs both in the U.S. and India (including several times at the International Odissi Festival in Bhubaneshwar, the Biswa Odissi Utsav in Charlotte, the San Antonio City Diwali Festival, the Houston Miller Theater). She is also a faculty at Kala Bhavan (the education wing of the Houston Durga Bari Society) and Silambam Houston. She also runs a nonprofit organization ONNOI that seeks to build bridges between the various cultures of this world while providing a platform for young artists.
Swagata Banerjee is the founder and artistic director of Moksha Academy of Odissi Dance. Located in the foothills of Rockies, Moksha Academy is the cradle that trains and mentors, a cohort of dancers, across different age groups, and cultural backgrounds, and brings them together in to a singular community. Her dedication to the dance form, and strive for perfection is evident in each and every aspect of the school and its rigor. Swagata is a disciple of Dr. Aditi Bandyopadhyay, Guru Rina Jana and presently under the mentorship of Guru Bijayini Satpathy. Swagata is an educator by profession. Her graduate studies in Early Childhood Education focused on the role of dance in fine motor and gross motor development in children. One of Swagata’s latest project was an artistic collaboration with the University of Colorado’s Department of Film and Theater on an award winning documentary film, “Three Worlds – One Stage”. The documentary premiered in the Global Indian Film Festival in Mumbai, and was awarded the prestigious Best Documentary Film, 2019. It has also premiered in the Utah Dance Film Festival and Dragon Film Festival, Colorado. It has also released in film festivals across Europe and Asia.
Dr. Deepa Mahadevan has been a student of Guru Shradha since 2010. She has been under the tutelage of Niharika Mohanty with yearly intensive workshops with both Guru Sujata Mohapatra and Guru Ratikant Mohapatra. She has been part of several productions of Guru Shradha including ‘Dashanan’ at the International Odissi festival- 2011 in India where she played the role of Lakshmana. In 2019, she performed for the International Odissi Alliance, which took place in North Carolina, USA. Her performance was also featured as a soloist at the Biswa Odissi Festival held online in the year 2021. She has been presented as a soloist and ensemble dancer in several of Guru Shradha performances including the Drive East Festival held in 2021. Dr. Deepa Mahadevan is also a Bharatanatyam dancer, teacher, choreographer and the founder/artistic director of Tiruchitrambalam school of dance She completed her Phd. in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis- www.deepamahadevan.com
Meera Das is a name which is kindred to Odissi, since time. Hailing from a small district of Keonjhar, Odisha and her pander in the art form, made her one of the fervid disciples of the legend & doyen himself, The Padma Vibhushan Guru Shri Kelucharan Mohapatra. She, out of her adherence towards the dance and her guru, was the frontline in all of his major choreographies and productions and got the honored to share the stage with luminary Icons Padmashree Guru Smt Kumkum Mohanty, & Padmashree Guru Smt Sanjukta Panigrahi. She was also privileged to get guidance under Padmashree Guru Gangadhar Pradhan. She fostered the art form from a small district of Odisha to that of more than 300 districts across the globe abruptly, being have performed and epitomized it in all of the 7 Continents, for more than 60 Countries in a span of 4 decades. Her Stalwart nature towards both Odissi dance and her guru along with stern & diligent practice, bestowed her with performances on all of the major dance festivals of India and other parts of the world like Konark Dance Festival, Khajuraho Dance Festival, Nishagandhi Dance Festival, Kinkini Dance Festival to name a few in India and the Major Dance Festivals abroad arranged in the Asian Nations, the Europe, Middle East, the United States, and many others to mention. She has made a Niche for herself with Awards and Accreditations from all over the world like the, State Sangeet Natak Academy Award, Sanjukta Panigrahi Samman, Outstanding Senior Artist of ICCR, Top National Artist of Doordarshan to mention a very few among them. With the kind blessings of her Guru Shri Kelucharan Mohapatra she has entrenched her own Dance Company cleped as Gunjan Dance Academy in Cuttack for over 2 and half decades now, whose ensemble successfully has been performing and touring the Globe. Along with the establishment of Gunjan she has composed and choreographed 40 dance numbers. She efficiently conducts and convenes the Gunjan Dance and Music Festival and also 4 other major festivalsfeaturing great artistes of difference art forms. She has contently produced extremely talented and ardent dancers of the repertoire, who are themselves epitomes of their Guru. Her entire life is a dedicated journey of dance which till her last breathe will be for, the then cause of Odissi and its upliftment around the World.
Maya Kulkarni is a dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher and commentator, Maya Kulkarni is a highly respected and well-known figure in the Indian dance world. As a performer, she won widespread praise for her flawless technique and story-telling abilities. Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times hailed her as the ‘Dancer’s Dancer”. Maya has performed extensively in the US, Europe and India and composed many of her own dance pieces. In the past decade she had choreographed 24 new pieces of works ranging from 15 minutes to 45 minutes long productions. Among these, “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, “Medea’s passion” and “Adventures of a Naughty Bee” stretch the boundaries of the classical forms to non-traditional themes and demonstrate the versatility and richness of Shilpanatana dance form. Maya has composed within the traditional genre as well. “Ardhanarinateswara”, “Sayankale”, and “Yakshini”, “Impossible Romance”, “The Woman with Parrot”, “The Huntress” and “The woman in the Mirror” are created closer to the traditional form. The Greek mythological pieces were shown to glowing notices first in 2019 at the ‘Drive East’ festival in New York City. ‘The Allegory of the Cave’ was presented at the Erasing Border festival. “The Adventures of a Naughty Bee” premiered in 2021, while “Medea’s passion” and “Impossible Romance” were presented at the We are Dancing festival on 7th May 2022.
Aruna Mohanty is an Odissi dancer, choreographer and guru. She is currently the Secretary of the Orissa (Odisha) Dance Academy.[1] She has received a number of awards for her work, including the Padmashree award. Aruna Mohanty started her training in Odissi under Shrinath Rout and Gobinda Pal. In 1972 she started training under Gangadhar Pradhan. She has also received guidance in the dance form from Pankaj Charan Das, Kelucharan Mohapatra, Sanjukta Panigrahi and Sonal Mansingh.She has also received training in Odissi music from Nirmal Mohanty and Shantanu Das. Aruna Mohanty has nearly five decades of experience as a dancer and choreographer. Her choreographed works include Srushti O Pralay depicting the super cyclone that hit Odisha in 1999, Sravana Kumar, Kharavela, Jatra Baramasi, Gatha Odissi, Pratinayak, Krishna Sharanam, several Ashtapadis from Jayadeva's Gita Govinda, and Siddhartha based on the novel of the same name by the German novelist Hermann Hesse. She has used her art to examine contemporary and social issues; for example. in Naari, gender stereotypes and the status of women in society are explored through the lives and stories of several women in Indian literature and history, such as Sita, Draupadi, Mandodari and Nirbhaya. She has conducted research on dance, focusing on topics such as the representation of the male dancer in classical sculpture and the evolution of Odissi in the post-Independence era. She has been a visiting scholar at several universities in the United States of America, such as the University of California, University of South Carolina and Cornell University. Her awards consist of Padmashree, Government of India, 2016-17, State Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Government of Odisha, 2014, Central Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Government of India, 2010, Sanjukta Panigrahi Memorial National Award, 2001, Mahari Award, Guru Pankaj Charan Research Foundation, 1997, Bharat Bhavan Award, conferred on the recipient by the President of India, and Jagannath Sanskruti Bikash Parishad Award.
Gayatri Senapati is a software engineer by profession, but she has been passionate about music since childhood. She has learned Odissi and Hindustani classical music from different Gurus. Gayatri got the musical genes from her mother, who has been her constant guiding light in this journey. Gayatri’s songs have been featured in Radio Zindagi, Bharat FM, Odissi International, in addition to numerous other cultural and fundraising events in North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts and Connecticut over last 15 years. She won the title of Charlotte Indian Idol during the festival of India in 2014 and has been an integral part of the Greater Charlotte music community.
