In memory of a legendary dancer

Pravaha’, an event in memory of the late guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, was organised by the Sanjali Centre for Odissi Dance at Seva Sadan recently.

The programme started with Padmashri Ranjana Gauhar, from Delhi, performing a piece on Lord Shiva. Her second piece was Jhuki Aayi Badariya Sawan Ki, a Meera bhajan. 

She was accompanied by Prafulla Mangaraj on pakhawaj, Suresh Sethi on vocals, Prabhu Behara on flute and Jeevan Prakash on sitar.

The second piece was Dasavatar and performed by the students of Sanjali Centre for Odissi Dance. 

The piece started with the shloka Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya and the dancers enacted the scene from the Bhagwad Gita in which Lord Krishna gives an advice to Arjuna while riding his chariot to the war. 

The last performance was by Neelay Sengupta and Saswati Garai Ghosh from Kolkata, who began with Gati Vilas Pallavi and concluded with Maya Manav, which showed the killing of Mareech by Lord Rama. 

A student of odissi dancer Sharmila Mukherjee, Maya Krishnamurty said that she was excited about performing at the event.
 

“I was a part of the team which performed the dasavatar, which is a piece that depicted the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu. 

 

Our team was a seven member one and the piece was almost 20 minutes long as we acted each incarnation out. We did start rehearsing a while back and the performance was well-coordinated,” she said. 

Maya said that since dance was a constant learning process, she always felt that she could do better each time.

Another performer from the school, Abhayalakshmi MB, said that she has performed many times with the school but this programme was special. 

“It gave us an opportunity to perform one of the greatest dance pieces ever and my guru had modified the piece accordingly. This was our ‘shradanjali’ to the legendary artiste guru Kelucharan Mohapatra,” said the performer.

This festival, which was held in honour of a great artiste, also marked a special occasion for the dance school. Sharmila, artistic director and founder of Sanjali Centre for Odissi Dance, said that this programme was special to her.

 “This was special for us since this was the tenth anniversary of my school. I started work on this programme more than three months ago. Just like my guru was passionate about the dance, its evolution and more; I also included seminars during the first half of the day to make it a largerexperience. This year’s edition was definitely done in a bigger manner,” said Sharmila. 

The audience was also throughly impressed by the performance. 

Sarika Sengupta, who has also learnt classical dance, said that it was always endearing to see a well-planned dance performance.

 “The footwork, energy and synchronisation of the artistes made every minute of the performance worth it,” she said.