As part of the Bharat Nrithya Darshan 2012, a graceful odissi dance recital was presented by Madhulita Mohapatra and her troupe at Seva Sadan
recently.
This was organised by Sri Padmavathi Kala Nikethan. Odissi is an ancient and breathtakingly beautiful form of sacred dance, which originally developed in the temple of Lord Jagannath in Orissa as a form of worship and meditation.
This supremely elegant style of dance is a visual delight — a dance of love, beauty, ecstasy and intense passion, lyrical, pure, divine and human, all rolled into one.
"The rhythm, the bhangis (dance postures) and the mudras (hand formations) used in odissi have a distinctive quality of their own. That is what I wanted to offer
to Bangalore. It's been a pleasure to perform to such a receptive audience," says Madhulita, the choreographer of the entire show.
Madhulita is a young odissi dancer, who has received her Nrutya Acharya from Orissa Dance Academy and Nrutya Shastri from the Sangeet Natak Akademi.
The evening began with the dhyaye subarna barna, an invocatory dance piece for an auspicious beginning in praise of goddess Durga.
It beautifully showed the embodiment of the female strength through the
depiction of how she killed the evil demon Mahisasura. There was an interesting
representation of the five essential elements of nature as well.
This was followed by the Bajuchhi Sahi Bajare, which portrayed the eternal love of Radha and Krishna and how their little love affair had become the talk of the town.
"The Bajucchi was my favourite piece in the whole evening.
The intricate costumes and rasa lila incorporated into the dance were very beautiful to watch," says Sujay A, an audience member.
"It's been a good enjoyable evening. I had come to learn about a dance form that I know little about and that has been accomplished. It's been a very absorbing show," says Manjula Rajashekhar, who attended the recital.
"You could tell that the dancers are well-coordinated just by listening to the
sound of the ghungroo move at the same time," she adds.
The concluding piece was the madhurastaka, a traditional Sanskrit composition glorifying the beauty of Lord Krishna.
The music for this dance was very pleasant to hear and the energetic movements of the dancers told stories of his butter stealing, of him stealing the clothes of the bathing gopis and even, the colourful festival of Holi.