To browse Academia. Exploring classical love in the digital age. Are there ways of emphasising the fluidity instead of the fixity of a classical dance language? A case in point is Odissi, a classical dance style that traces its roots to Orissa in eastern India. In the six decades of its existence as a classical dance recognised by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Odissi has been, in equal parts, a product of multiple shifts and ruptures, and its historical notion of itself as a dance style.
Interestingly, the 'traditional' in Odissi has never been a fixed space. In my training with three different disciples of Kelucharan Mohapatra, each representing three distinct generations of his pedagogical trajectory, I have had occasion to see how he kept the form in a constant state of flux throughout his career.
I argue that what we now consider the repertoire, the 'tradition' of Odissi, emerges from a very individualistic imagination that was constantly reshaping a form in response to choreographic and pedagogic challenges. Then, what is Odissi? Is it movement material; is it contained in the chowk and tribhangi? Or is it a manifestation of a history of performance, sculpture and literature?
Or is it a framework that enables particular movement possibilities? These flexible notions of form are central to fresh investigations by second and third-generation choreographers who engage with Odissi through a new process of authorship. I specifically focus on the choreographic processes and training mechanisms of artists such as Surupa Sen, Sharmila Biswas and Ramli Ibrahim.
For instance, Sen's work renegotiates the relationship between dancing bodies in space, while Biswas' choreographies depart from a dominant Odissi aesthetics through multiple triggers in Oriya folk rhythms and traditional games. Meanwhile, there is an element of the subversive in Ibrahim's restaging of Odissi choreographies. How does their work fare in an ecology that chooses to situate the form within its previous manifestations, treating it as a fixed and sacred identity inextricably bound to geography and culture?
