Richly refreshing
SHYAMHARI CHAKRA
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Aruna Mohanty's adventure with modern Oriya literature deserves to be hailed.
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REMARKABLE Aruna Mohanty captivated the audience's attention.
Orissa has no dearth of dance festivals any more. Hardly a week passes here without such an event being held at the State capital or in smaller towns these days. But what takes a toll in the process of popularisation of Odissi in the nook and corner of the State is the quality of dance and dancers.
Barring a very few individuals and institutions, the land of Odissi has very little to boast of now. In such a depressing scenario, when the three-day Guru Pankaj Nrutya Utsav (dance festival in memory of Padma Shri Pankaj Charan Das, guru of legendary Kelucharan Mohapatra) was held recently at Bhubaneswar, there was little reason to cheer. We saw star dancer Sujata Mohapatra performing with youngsters. And the hosts did no mistake in opening the festival with Das' aged dancer-daughter's performance followed by his grand daughter.
Everything was, however, not wrong with the event. For those, who were bored of watching the same set of faces and choreographic compositions on different occasions, it presented some richly refreshing and memorable moments of performances.
Danseuse Aruna Mohanty showed her remarkable strength and vision as a choreographer of contemporary sensibilities while presenting a sterling solo performance. Her recent choreography, Barabadhu (best bride), based on noted Oriya poet Mayadhar Mansingh's poem Dhupa captivated everybody's attention. Replete with romanticism, the poem penned with an autobiographical undertone, portrays the passionate expressions of a man for his wife when he meets her after a long time.While Aruna neatly handled the challenge of choreographing the male character in a female body, her adventure with modern Oriya literature deserves to be hailed. How long could the audience see repeated performances of the same set of abhinayas (expressional dances) based on ancient and medieval writings in Oriya and Sanskrit that tell the same stories of the mythological characters. If dance has to catch up with the modern mind, it has to be innovative with the contemporary sensibility within the classical format. And Aruna has proved the point.
Like the eloquent expressions of the dancer, music by young and promising music composer Sumant Mohanty was soul stirring. The other performances that received rave response from the audience were solo by Sonali Mohapatra, a hearing impaired artiste and Jami eLynn Colley from the United Staets, besides a brilliant duet dance by Amulya Balabantray and Debashree Patnaik, disciples of Guru Bichitrananda Swain.
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