Debadhara Festival built round Debaprasad style of Odissi - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

The three-day festival at Habitat's Stein auditorium in Delhi, featuring Odissi of the Debaprasad school, was a joint effort by Debadhara run by Binayak Panda and Tridhara, the institution under older brother and guru Gajendra Panda, at Bhubaneswar of Odisha. With the dance tribe in general facing daunting financial limitations in arranging events involving the larger circle of dance practitioners, the brothers must be credited for managing grants by the Ministry of Culture and other Corporate Sectors enabling the sponsoring of such a festival, involving dancers from forms outside Odissi too.

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Tribute - The Pinnacle of Kathak - Pandit Kundan Lal Gangani - Dr Chitra Sharma

Pandit Kundan Lal Gangani was one of the most eminent exponents of the Jaipur Gharana, whose creative vision shaped the very form in which this illustrious tradition is known today. Drawing upon the priceless legacy inherited from his forefathers, he enriched and expanded the art of Kathak through his profound knowledge, imagination, and experience, creating a legacy that has itself become a part of history. 

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Obit / Tribute - Teejan Bai: Folk Theatre artist from the Pardhi Margins to the Throne of the Mahabharata - Dr Navina Jafa

The stage did not tremble when Teejan Bai stepped on it; it remembered how to tremble.

Teejan Bai, the great teller of the Pandavas, died on 5 July 2026 at the age of 70. She was born into the Pardhi community, a denotified tribe in Chhattisgarh that had been unjustly branded as criminal and pushed to the margins, and was told early that women in her world were not meant to speak for gods. She did not learn to obey. She learned to sing the Mahabharata aloud, on her own feet, and in her own voice. 

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Book Review - Dance games for digital age denizens - Ranee Kumar

Though not the first of its kind, this play activity book on Indian classical dance has a cutting edge with its mind games and pithy puzzles. Aptly titled 'Natya Kreeda' and authored by California-based Aria University professor Dr. Velury Sumitra (Dept of Kuchipudi), the glossy 46-page book is a mini handbook on dance, not just for kids but for dance aspirants across all ages.

It's a brilliantly conceived workbook with a definite design and direction. Replete with artistic pictures the table of contents, divides itself into seven chapters beginning with: 1) The dance Maze puzzle; 2) Word-finder; 3) Yati and builder games; 4) Jumbled word games; 5) Advanced puzzle sections; 6) Complex word-building and 7) Answers to the puzzles. The author has provided ample instructions to the practitioner/readers of this workbook in the form of one-page notes - on her own objective in crafting this book, another note to the dance teachers, a guiding page to the dance maze puzzles apart from aesthetic titles in Sanskrit with English tag line.

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Article - Seeing the world through a Bharatanatyam body - Samyuktha Gopi Raj

Reflections from The Buckley School's World Dance Workshop and Flip the Script

At The Buckley School, Sherman Oaks, CA, dance education extends beyond learning choreography. It encourages students to explore movement as culture, storytelling, and identity. During the Fall 2025 semester of World Dance, culminating in the October 2025 World Dance Workshop, and later through participation in the April 2026 spring dance concert in Flip the Script, I began to understand how deeply my Bharatanatyam training shaped the way I approached unfamiliar dance forms. Rather than feeling separate from my classical background, each experience reinforced how Bharatanatyam provides a foundation that allows a dancer to move thoughtfully across traditions. 

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Trip down Odissi's memory lane in Orissa Dance Academy's Subarnima - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Celebrations marking fifty years of an art Institution, can take on many hues. Apart from marking a milestone, it can be a time for stock taking, for renewing pledges and also reveling in still retaining a place in a fast-moving world with a penchant for splashes of brilliance rather than longevity. What one saw in Subarnima of Orissa Dance Academy, an institution with a hyper active calendar of events, established in 1975 by the enterprising Guru, late Gangadhar Pradhan and now managed by his top disciple Aruna Mohanty, was a thoughtfully designed umbrella of items, encapsulating a salutation to the artistry, of all the great Gurus of Odissi - but for whose Herculean efforts, present day Odissi could not have boasted of such a large presence in the prevailing dance scenario of India. All credit to Aruna Mohanty, Creative Director cum Secretary of Orissa Dance Academy, who by laying stress on the contribution of the entire family of teachers, has subsumed the invariable contradictions existing between and amongst different Paramparas. By this one act of unifying the entire Odissi brigade with so much grace, the three day Subarnima event (June 22 to 24, 2026 at Rabindra Mandap, Bhubaneswar), acquired a special texture of togetherness and bonhomie.

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Article - Embracing motherhood - Sree Veena Mani

Most of us here have embraced motherhood. We know what it feels like to not wear our bells for almost a year - whether it is for the first baby or the second. Looking back at both my pregnancies, there is one thing I can say with certainty: it may be a pause from being on stage, but it is never a pause from dance itself.

Through both my pregnancies, I continued to grow as an artiste. I focused on understanding the theoretical aspects of Nritya, exploring them in depth with my guru, and strengthening my foundation as a practitioner. One of those explorations was even featured on this website.

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