Indian dancer Shashwati Barai Ghosh entertained the audience by presenting Odissi dance at Music and Dance Centre of Bangladesh Shilpaklala Academy on June 12.
Nrityanandan organised the show following a weeklong Odissi workshop where Shashwati trained local dancers on different aspects of Odissi dance.
Odissi is one of the eight major genres of classical dance. The dance form, which originated at Hindu temples of Odisha around 500 BC, draws its movement and repertoire from sculpture, painting, literature, theatre and ritual practices.
At the show Shashwati demonstrated different segments of Odissi dance including bandana, Pallavi, Margam and others. She was joined by a group of 56 local dancers of different age groups, all of whom participated at the workshop.
Odissi is traditionally a dance-drama genre of performance art, where the artists and musicians play out a mythical story, a spiritual message or devotional poem from the Hindu texts, using symbolic costumes, body movement, abhinaya (expressions) and mudras (gestures and sign language) set out in ancient Sanskrit literature. Odissi is learnt and performed as a composite of basic dance motif called the Bhangas (symmetric body bends, stance). It involves lower (footwork), mid (torso) and upper (hand and head) as three sources of perfecting expression and audience engagement with geometric symmetry and rhythmic musical resonance. An Odissi performance repertoire includes invocation, nritta (pure dance), nritya (expressive dance), natya (dance drama) and moksha (dance climax connoting freedom of the soul and spiritual release).
Traditional Odissi exists in two major styles, the first perfected by women and focussed on solemn, spiritual temple dance (maharis); the second perfected by boys dressed as girls (gotipuas which diversified to include athletic and acrobatic moves, and were performed from festive occasions in temples to general folksy entertainment. Modern Odissi productions by Indian artists have presented a diverse range of experimental ideas, culture fusion, themes and plays.