Indo American Association, Houston along with Orissa Dance Academy hosted Udayraga Festival of Dance to uplift the spirits of young dancers from all around the world, during these difficult times when people are forced to stay indoors with no chance of performing on stage.
This noble venture has started from the first Friday of August this fateful year and is slated to be held every Friday till December 2020.
*Click the Artist name to watch the video
Young and vibrant Odissi dancer Lipsa Satpathy -a disciple of Padmasri Aruna Mohanty -opened accounts portraying nayika bhavas in their different stages. All the songs were in the Odia language, but the emoting of the bhavas were so expressive that there was no hitch in the understanding of the theme. (Detailed review)
Dancers who kept the serial going every week were Bharatanatyam aspirant Smriti Krishnamurthy – a disciple of Anitha Guha-who performed Ganesh Pancharatna, a composition of Adi Shankaracharya; Odissi dancer Sonali Mishra -student of Ratikant Mohapatra- performed a pure nritta piece following it up with abhinaya was commendable.
It was quite refreshing to see dancers practising different forms of classical dance as well as Contemporary dance forms taking part in this virtual programme. They not only entertained the audience but also schooled the lay audience, to differentiate one form from the other and savour their taste. Guru Aruna Mohanty’s farsighted approach to the generation next of her community is praiseworthy.
It was a good exposure for me to see Ayana Mukherjee trained in Kuchipudi by Guru Jaya Rama Rao and Vanasree Rao performing Dasavatar – the ten incarnations of Vishnu.
[adrotate group=”9″]
In this series, connoisseurs of dance from around the globe had the good fortune of seeing Parswanath Upadhye perform Shivananda Hari as told by Shankaracharya. Parswanath is a reputed Bharatanatyam practitioner, who is very innovative when it comes to the idiom of his learnt form. He has pushed the barriers of the form and taken it to an altogether different level. Though puritans may raise their eyebrows to his evolved style, he has given Bharatanatyam a new dimension and has taken many steps forward. Art is never static and cannot depend totally on repetition and gather moss. His Ananda Tandava was jaw-dropping.
Preetisha Mohapatra the granddaughter of the doyen of Odissi dance Kelucharan Mohapatra is an upcoming talented dancer full of potential. She bowled over rasikas with the abhinaya piece ‘Sri Shyama Chabi Chataka’. Her performance was a connoisseurs delight.
Odissi dancer Sridutta Bhol trained by Padmasri Gangadhar Pradhan, Padmasri Aruna Mohanty and Bichitrananda Swain enthralled the audience with the rendition of Rag Rageswari Pallavi followed by an abhinaya piece to an Odia composition choreographed by Aruna Mohanty.
Kuchipudi duo Prateeksha Kasi and Bijan Palai were rare jewels, which we were fortunate enough to see. Odissi performer Kausavi Sarkar was a flawless performer.
It was a treat to see Janardan Raj Urs– extensively trained by Maya Rao in Kathak and contemporary dance by her daughter Madhu Nataraj -describing his interesting dance journey. Greatly inspired and impacted, as he said, by a letter sent by the United Nations to the world to convey Eco and Ego amidst nature, he produced this unique piece using his knowledge of contemporary dance, mime, martial arts, and movement. Being disturbed with a lot of incidents like the cruelty of humankind against animals; the revelation of Wuhan market happenings and the bloodshed in slaughterhouses, he implanted bird movements to a stunning start.
In his personal experience, animal sacrifices were common whenever there was a prayer to his family deity. The head of the animal was the offering while the blood-soaked body was left to rot in the open field. To showcase this he had, very significantly chosen swords and bloodletting and atrocities in this sequence.
[adrotate group=”9″]
The denial of human beings for causing diseases and sufferings to fellow human beings, he incorporated chasing sequences in his choreography. The production revealed his sensitivity to the world around him. The imageries of nature were selected with care to convey his message through his learnt medium. Some of the Captions like ‘Men are devils and animals are tormented souls’ aptly fell into line to express the theme of the piece ‘It’s time for nature’.
Come Fridays dance lovers wait eagerly for their fare of young talent.
