Traditional Odissi was performed as "Mahart Dance" in front of and, dedicated to Lord Jagannath. Due to reasons socio-religious, it came to be performed before a much wider audience through the "Gotipua Dance This, typically local, traditional strain stemmed from the classicism of Indian dance in general as elaborated in general Maharshi Bharata's Natya Sastra and Nandikeswar's "Abhinaya Darpana". However, the credit of echoing and establishing the critical stance that this was classical and uniquely regional was left to eminent dance critics like the late Charles Fabri. Mohan Khokar, Dhirendra Nath Patnatk, Nil Madhab Bose & Dr. Sunil Kothari.
These by themselves would have meant little had it not been for active institutional support of the "Jayantika". "Kala Vikash Kendra" & "National Music Association Crystalysing the reperinire and training the performers who would give shape to this classicism on the stage were the doyen amongst present day Gurus and pioneers of yesteryears Gurus Pankaj Ch. Das. Kelu Charan Mohapatra, Mahadev Rout, Late Deba Prasad Das, Mayadhar Rout. Ramani Ranjan Jena. Gangadhar Pradhan, Raghunath Duti and larckrishna Behera. The countless students and performers, both from within and outside the country, should take no less credit for clevating the dance to the position it occupies now.
Yet, till date, there had been no accepted basic training principles in written form.
The government of Orissa, through the Odissi Research Centre undertook, as a first-step. to fill up this gap. Those who gave successful shape to this attempt were apart from the Centre's own faculty, Guru Pankaj Ch. Das, Pandit Ndamani Misra. Dr. Bhagaban Panda & Smt. Sanjukta Panigrahi.
This manual would have been inadequate without its many illustrations. The entire credit for this painstaking and innovative work goes to the Centre's Brundaban Sahoo and Manas Jena, a student of B. K. Art College, Bhubaneswar.
It is our fond hope that "The Odissi Dance Path Finder would serve the purpose of imparting a uniform mode of instruction to the thousands of young Odissi Dance students. We hope we are not being over-ambitious in ascribing to this publication the role that an Alphabet Primer has in relation to Academic Education. Stylistic purity is indispersible in the learning of any classical dance form: without it, no training is complete. Hence, in this publication, an attempt has been made to give a direction through illustrations) in achieving this stylistic perfection. Simultaneously, some movements and positions of different parts of the body have been identified with nomenclatures. As far as possible, the acceptance and consensus of the leading Gurus and performers have been taken while attempting the above.
Even if our attempt has been to indicate the beginnings of the path towards stylistic perfection, we are confident, this would be of great help to students and Gurus alike. The publication's acceptance and popularity would justify our hope and confidence.
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