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A time to remember

Felicitated Recipients of the award

How much of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, the man considered a byword for Odissi, does one see in Bhubaneswar today? Frequent chants of the guru’s name during Srjan’s Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Award 2008 at Rabindra Mandap notwithstanding, s enior disciple/practitioners largely remain outside Orissa.

Daughter-in-law Sujatha, not featured in this festival, remains arguably the finest exponent of the guru’s Odissi gharana. The State-owned Odissi Research Centre, renamed after the guru, sports the strange phenomenon of dancers trained in Guruji’s Odissi style, now being taught by a guru from the Debaprasad school, Durgacharan Ranbir.

Disciples including Guruji’s son Ratikant Mohapatra are busy choreographing new works of their own, as all have to move on. One hopes the legacy of the large corpus of compositions of Guruji is not erased through non-use.

The meticulously organised festival conferred awards (instituted by Srjan in 1995) comprising Rs.25,000 cash with citation, to eminent artists from the fields of theatre (Kumudini Devi), dance (Ramani Ranjan Jena), music (Banamali Maharana) and film (Nikhil Baran Sengupta). An impressive ceremony on the final day, with nostalgic memories recaptured, had speakers losing all sense of time — singer Sagarika Pradhan the sufferer. Slotted to perform earlier, she was unfairly relegated to the last section of the festival.

The three-day fare of music/dance was pan-Indian. If Rakesh Chaurasia’s flute playing Vachaspati and a Pahadi dhun provided elevating music along with Tanmoy Bose’s sensitive tabla accompaniment, the Carnatic saxophone duet of M.S. Lavanya and M.S. Subbalaxmi, after a racy Hamsadhwani “Vatapi”, created majestic melody in the Brindavan Saranga Tyaragaraja composition “Kamalabdakula”, S. Kartik’s violin accompaniment adding its own richness.

Kelucharan Mohapatra.

Young Namrata Sharma’s Odissi proved good training under Guru Kelucharan‘s disciple Daksha Mashruwala. “Prana Sanginire” the Oriya song was charmingly rendered and right from the mangalacharan one saw the balanced body in the dancer’s movements. The bhramari turns though, need to maintain the chauka level right through. The recorded music was of a high order. The involved rendition of the Devi composition choreographed by Daksha, in the nritta components, was too reminiscent of Guruji’s creations in pallavis and moksha.

Chennai’s Jyotsna Jagannathan, trained in the Vazhuvoor Bharatanatyam bani by Guru A. Lakshman, is a polished dancer, her impeccable dance lines topped with a mobile and expressive face complemented by the ability for lucid introduction of her own items. But one wishes she had chosen at least one typically conventional item combining nritta and abhinaya instead of making concessions to a non-Tamilian audience with too many ‘tukra-s’ like “Rusali Radha, Rusala Krishna” and Surdas’s “Maiya more, mein nahai makhana khayo” — very winsomely rendered but not substantially representative of Bharatanatyam . The recorded evocative music had Hariprasad’s singing.

Anita Sharma’s Sattriya performance along with four well-trained and beautifully synchronised dancers was one of the arresting recitals seen of this form. Having absorbed the best of Raseswar Saikia Borboyan and now Guru Jatin Goswami, Anita’s dance has a vivacity and dramatic intensity along with inner stillness. Nandi, chali nritya, ramdani, gitor nach and mela nach saw the dancer’s absorbed presentation — with the coordinated group formations providing the backdrop. The last bit danced to taanam type of syllables had special verve.

Aloka Kanungo’s Dasha Mahavidya in group cried out for more leisurely and savoured treatment, the frenetic pace making for dizzying superimposition of unregistered images.

The Yantra diagrams of Sri Vidya with their geometry as a fitting backdrop for the Shakti theme, and drawings of Chinnamasta and Bagalamukhi (unclear in the dance), got overwhelmed by the blood red costumes of the dancers. The impact of drawing inspiration from Beejamantra-s and shabdaswara patha, and arts like Ravana Chhaya and Sambalpur’s Shabda Nritya was lost in the sameness of the fast music with the heralding tone lacking contrastingly quieter moments.

Ratikant Mahapatra chose a bold theme like ‘Mrityu’. Keeping the narrative simple and straightforward, the dance interaction sought to establish the supremacy of Death over Dharma, Gyana, Prema and Shanti — none of which would have significance without the looming inevitability of mortality with Mrityu. The entire effort was aided by Manmohan Acharya’s stirringly simple Sanskrit script posing no incomprehensible barriers for anyone.

Lakshmikant Palit’s score boldly used strong instruments, not common to Odissi, like saxophone and mandolin to telling effect. Jayadev’s floor-level lighting imparting a bright and shade mystery to all dance formations was a feature. Above all were trained dancers moving in total and neat synchronisation, though Death, while neat, could have been more powerfully delineated.

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