A photo and painting exhibition brings the Gotipua dance form to the fore
Gallery Espace, recently hosted an exhibition of paintings and photographs by veteran artist Birendra Pani titled Boy Dancer: Convergence and Continuum, in the Capital.
Pani makes Gotipua dancers of Orissa the subject of his art. Through ‘convergence’ he tries to merge old local issues with the new contemporary world.
Gotipua was once a popular traditional dance form found in Puri district of Orissa during the Medieval times. A single boy used to perform in the guise of a girl, at religious festivals, social gatherings and in temple courtyards. This dance is an important vehicle of expression, with its own language, rhetoric and symbols, which reach out to people.
Boys from a tender age undergo rigorous training in dance, music instruments and in acrobatics. They perform till the age of 18 since the muscles become stiff after that age.
Intense images
Pani arrests intense images of these Gotipua boys in his camera. The paintings convey the social dilemmas and cultural crisis of these boys and the dance itself.
There was also a special, mesmerising performance by Gotipuas of different age groups elaborately dressed from head to toe in the female garb.
They performed four dances, each of their performances received a huge round of applause from the audiences who were gathered there to witness this vanishing dance form.
Born in Orissa, a son of carpenter, Pani has studied at Shantiniketan and Baroda. He is also the recipient of a junior fellowship award of the HRD Ministry by the Government of India.
“It is an effort to show my perspective of this rich past and now fading dance form, an attempt to bring forth the local, regional issues in this contemporary world,” says the artist.
Pani adds, “Society sees them (Gotipuas) in a precarious state of neither being male nor female.
Still they struggle for their existence while continuing the tradition, and also transcending boundaries of gender.”
ANKUR PALIWAL
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