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Categories
| Odissi Icon |
| Lifestyle | |||
| Written by Anandhi Gopinath | |||
| Tuesday, 14 April 2009 11:26 | |||
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In his native Orissa in India, Durga is a celebrity although his demeanour will never indicate that. He is one of the foremost Odissi educators of his time, teaching this sensuous dance form in the footsteps of his mentor, the late Deba Prasad Das. In fact, Durga is in Malaysia for a special tribute show to his guru, featuring three generations worth of choreography — that of Deba, Durga himself and from his student Leena Mohanty. The show, entitled Anjali, will feature dancers from Kalpana Dance Theatre and the Temple of Fine Arts. It is being staged today in Penang and on April 17 to 19 in Kuala Lumpur (see the footnote). Deba was part of a trinity that included Pankaj Charan Das and Kelucharan Mohapatra — they redefined the practice of Odissi in the 1950s. Each of these three masters created a particular style, and these sub-schools of Odissi grew under their stewardship. All three teachers have since passed away, leaving their individual style, or gharana, to be kept alive by the students they trained. Durga is a disciple of Deba, and has been a key player in perpetuating this gharana. Today, Durga is considered one of the most  senior living Odissi gurus and an icon for the dance form. To have him come here, indeed to watch him train his students, is a rare treat. There is an aura about the man that is difficult to describe, born from a lifetime immersed in Odissi. Yet, there is a subtle worldliness about Durga too. Displaying his sensitivity to the needs of The Edge Financial Daily’s photographer Suhaimi Yusof without being asked, Durga strikes an appropriate pose for the camera, smiling quietly. When he notices Suhaimi moving around the dance studio searching for the perfect shot, Durga immediately adjusts himself accordingly. The two exchange knowing glances, and an instant friendship appears to have been forged. But while Durga is generous with his smiles and seems calm and content, he has not had the easiest of lifetimes. A great tragedy changed his life forever 10 years ago when an accident took the lives of two of his three children. The trauma from the accident — which happened when he was on the way to a performance — made him stop dancing for a while, but his desire to keep his guru’s dance alive kept him going. His cheerful demeanour belies the pain he still feels within. Kalpana Dance Theatre’s Shangita Namasivayam says Durga admits he doesn’t have the strength he once used to. His daughter Gayathri is performing in Anjali after many years of corrective surgery, hence the show is a personal journey as much as it is a professional one for him. Durga says Odissi is his life’s calling. “I only know Odissi,” he says, when I ask him if he would ever do anything else. “My life is my dance, my existence depends on it,” he adds.  Durga was born and raised in a village in Orissa with clear artistic inclinations from young. “During my childhood, I was always dancing… very different from my family,” he says, in halting English. “In school, I never listened to the teachers. I liked to dream about dancing. That is my interest.” Born into a well-to-do family of landlords, this was not an ambition anyone encouraged Durga to pursue. Yet, he knew that an academic future was not for him and that dance was his calling. So, much to his family’s chagrin, he applied for a place to study dance in the Utkal Sangeeta Mahavidyalaya, a renowned performing arts university in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa. But by the time he applied, the interview dates were filled up and he was turned away, his dreams shattered. “When I went to the university, guess who was there? Guru Balakrishna,” says Durga proudly, referring to the late Balakrishna Das, a leading exponent of Odissi music. “He saw me and said that if I have talent, I can join. Then, Pankaj Charan Das and Deba Prasad Das interviewed me, they asked me what I knew about dance. I told them I knew everything. So, they said this is not Odissi, this is Fodissi,” he recalls with a laugh. It was when Durga was at the brink of quitting — due to the physical strain of Odissi training, something he hadn’t anticipated — that he discovered his discipleship with Deba, and it was something that changed Durga’s life forever. “Guruji told me wait at least two or three months… after that, he said, if you want to stop you can go. But after three months, I didn’t want to leave my guru at all,” says Durga, his soft brown eyes spontaneously filling with tears from the memory. Durga trained intensely and later received a scholarship from the Indian government to keep on studying. He went on to earn post-graduate qualifications in Odissi, music and Sanskrit. He also began his own dance school, called Nrutyayan, thus continuing in the tradition of Deba’s gharana. The style that Deba made popular is recognisable by its emotive nature and heavy reliance on bhavana, or facial expression. “His approach was more direct, and certain emotions that were part of a dance was the key thing that Deba Prasad Das focused on. It’s more emotive, and more direct,” says Leena. “He used to go from village to village to see how Odissi could be imbibed with the tribal dance forms — that was his research. So, his gharana has a distinct flavour of Orissa.” Deba was also the first to bring Odissi onto the national stage in 1964, before which it was shrouded in relative obscurity. The traditionalist approach that Deba took to Odissi is something that appealed deeply to Durga, especially the emotional aspect of the dance — the idea is to relay the emotions as directly as possible to the audience. “I am teaching my guru’s gharana, but with some improvements,” says Durga with an impish smile. “I feel responsible to my guru to teach his gharana, that is my job — to train new people to keep his style alive. Sometimes I am worried, am I doing him enough justice? Am I doing a good job?” Shows like Anjali certainly indicate that Durga is doing a good job, especially since it involves dancers from more than one dance school and also pairs internationally renowned dancers — like Leena and her sister Leesa — with local talents. Durga says he is deeply impressed with the calibre and talent displayed by Odissi dancers here, and he makes an interesting observation. “Odissi is done differently here. Malaysian dancers are very good, but they are dancing for Malaysian audiences. I know, every dancer wants to reach out to the audience, but I think if we keep to the real, more authentic tradition, people will like it. They may find it hard to accept now, but they will understand it later. Otherwise, Odissi will lose its roots and its essence. Odissi was created as an offering to God, like a prayer. This cannot change,” he says in earnest. Durga turns to Leena and says something in Oriya, and she nods. “Ballet, for example. When an European ballet troupe travels to India, they will not make it Indian, they will perform it the way they always do,” she translates. “He thinks Odissi should not be contemporised, otherwise the essence of Odissi might be lost. The fundamentals cannot be changed in the name of evolution.” In fact, the pieces that are being staged as part of Anjali are very much tied to this principle and will be performed in Deba’s exact style. Anjali will showcase the newly choreographed Surya Mangalacharan and the rarely performed Vajrakanthi Pallavi, alongside two abhinaya (fully expressive) pieces and four other items, before ending on a high note with Moksha, the finale in which all the dancers will perform. Apart from Leena, Leesa and Gayathri, Anjali will also feature Geetha Shankaran-Lam, Umesh Shetty, Daisygarani Vijayakumaran, Parveen Nair, Sumathi Chandra, Manjula Radha Krishnan, Nadina Krishnan and Nritta Ganeshi Manoharan. The dancers will perform to live music from Dhanewsar Swain (playing the mardal), Dheeraj Kumar Mohapatra (vocals), Abhiram Nanda (flute) and Kalpana Paranjothy (sitar). As Leena outlines the repertoire, we can hear the music from the studio where practices are being held. Durga will not leave to watch the rehearsals until we are finished, so we end the interview with a final question — what does he hope to achieve for Odissi in his lifetime? ”I want to teach my students more and more,” he says simply. “I want my guru’s gharana to live on always. And I want to dance forever.” Anjali will be staged tonight at the Temple of Fine Arts, 1 Babington Avenue, Penang at 7.30pm and from April 17 to 19 at Auditorium Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia Tourism Centre, Jalan Ampang, KL at 8pm. To obtain invitations for both venues, please call Shangita at (017) 672 5672. This article appeared on the Live it! page, The Edge Financial Daily, April 14, 2009.
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