A fest that blended folk and classical

Expressbuzz, Jan 1, 2010
Shyamhari Chakra

IF DHAULI has the annual Dhauli national arts festival and Kalinga national martial arts festival and Khandagiri has the annual Kharavela national festival to highlight the respective heritage sites around the Capital City, the site of the 64-Yogini shrine at Hirapur near Bhubaneswar, one of the four rare sites of its kind in India, has now a similar annual festival – the Chausathi Yogini Mahotsav.A brain-child of writer and cultural activist Suresh Balabantray, who has written a book on the shrine, the festival, now in its third edition, is hosted by Bhubaneswar-based Nrutya Prativa dance institution with support of the local people and the Khurda district administration. The state government and the Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre under the Ministry of Culture came forward to extend their support to the event this year too.The just concluded three-day festival was a befitting blend of classical and folk arts that the connoisseurs and the commoners enjoyed equally. It had Odissi, Kathak and Bharatnatyam along with Gotipua, Sambalpuri and Ghumura. And it also featured the vanishing forms of Ghata Nrutya of Jhankad, Ghoda Nacha of Choudwar and Bagha Nacha of Ganjam which are being witnessed during specific ritualistic festivals.The Odissi segment had the best of artistes – star dancer Sujata Mohapatra, distinguished disciple and daughter-in-law of legendary Kelucharan Mohapatra; internationally acclaimed Rudrakshya Odissi troupe of Guru Bichitrananda Swain and New Delhi-based senior Odissi dancer Ranjana Gauhar who was conferred the Chausathi Yogini Nrutya Prativa Samman this year for her contribution to culture. Besides there was solo performance by Gayatri Chand and group presentations by the state-owned Odissi Research Centre and Nrutya Prativa troupe. However, it was the 12-year-old budding Odissi dancer Nritta Ganeshi Manoharan from Malayasia whose dance of amazing grace surprised the spectators.Two Kolkata-based dance troupes enthralled the audience with their energetic presentations - Kathak dancer Souvik Chakraborty and Bharatnatyam artiste Kashmira Samant. Young Souvik, who has emerged as one of the young and brilliant male Kathak dancers, presented good team work.One can only witness the thrilling Bagha Nacha (tiger dance) during the biennial Thakurani yatra of Ganjam. Similarly, the Ghata Nrutya is an important ritual associated with the Sarala temple of Jhankad. The audience had the rare opportunity to have glimpses of both the dances during this festival and also had Kalahandi’s enchanting Ghumura dance and the highly acrobatic Gotipua dance of Khurda.Though the festival had a lot of dance recitals, it had a segment for vocal and instrumental music. While veteran singer-composer Prafulla Kar presented matru vandana (an invocation to Mother Goddess) mardal exponent Guru Dhaneswar Swain and his troupe staged a pulsating performance of tala-vadya kacheri, an ensemble of percussion instruments that received rousing applause from the audience.