Article - Beyond Familiarity: Authenticity, Adaptation, and the Odissi Experience - Dr. Rohini Dandavate

Ever since I migrated to the U.S., I have sought to remain rooted in the authenticity and integrity of the Odissi style while finding ways to connect with audiences unfamiliar with its traditions, aesthetics, and cultural contexts. For me, the tension between authenticity and adaptation has never been about choosing one over the other. Rather, it has been a continuing process of understanding what must remain rooted in the tradition and what can evolve so that Odissi can speak meaningfully within the multicultural context of my adopted home.

Authenticity, as I understand it, cannot be static. Odissi itself has evolved through many historical transitions - from temple traditions and Mahari and Gotipua practices to its modern reconstruction and codification. Authenticity, therefore, is not the preservation of a frozen historical moment, but an ongoing relationship with tradition. My challenge has been to translate the form without losing its grammar, integrity, or cultural memory, while making it possible for audiences to encounter Odissi without first needing to understand all that lies behind it.

My experiments in translation began almost a month after my arrival in Ohio. In one of my earliest presentations, for a class of kindergarteners, I quickly learned from these five-year-olds that I needed to begin with stories and images familiar to them. Their response prompted me to think, learn, and discover new ways of presenting Odissi that could create curiosity about a movement language they had never encountered. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Interview - We worship Bharata Muni in Thailand: Bharatanatyam dancer Awassada Kilnsukhon - Shyamhari Chakra

She was in her mid-20's when she represented her country in the historic international conclave on Indian dance hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Sangeet Natak Akademi in New Delhi two years ago. The youngest delegate in the meet, she was one of the panelists to speak in the important and interesting session on Indian dance diaspora.

She is Bharatanatyam dancer Awassada Kilnsukhon from Thailand who was in India for two years and recently returned to her country upon completion of her masters in Bharatanatyam from Banaras Hindu University.

How did you get interested in dance?
I was born into a family of Thai classical musicians. Therefore, I grew up surrounded by the arts traditions of ancient Thailand. As a kid, I was quite fond of dancing. I began learning classical Thai dance as part of my school's dance curriculum from kindergarten when I was just four years old.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Anita says...September 2026

 Aaaand... hello again!

Another month goes by. Another capture through my personal lens. Another set of thoughts shared. As Time marches on and tastes shift and change, it is a challenge to find that common ground that you, the reader who can be - dancer, choreographer, guru, teacher, musician, composer, costume designer, lighting director, Arts manager or anyone who is interested or working in the performing arts sector can connect to. Being a senior in the field, I realise that many of my views are shaped by the long decades of learning, performing, producing, curating, mentoring, speaking and writing about dance and society. I write and speak as I see it.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Monsoon showers along with a program deluge - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

PARAMPARA FESTIVAL

Following a fairly barren two months, came a deluge of programmes in the capital starting with the annual Parampara Festival of the Reddys – which this year, considering the vagaries of sudden monsoon showers, was held at the Kamani auditorium, instead of the usual haunt of their own open-air theatre in their Saket home....

 

SARE JAHAN SE ACHCHA

Odissi exponent Ranjana Gauhar’s annual festival Sare Jahan se Achcha, began in the customary way established so far with the first evening being devoted to a presentation by the host institution Utsav. This year’s presentation Chitrangada based on Tagore’s play, with concept, script and direction by Ranjana and music direction by Saroj Mohanty, had Sandeep Dutta’s technical direction, for what has become the institution’s most prolifically staged nritta natika presentation.....

UNUSUAL KUCHIPUDI/KATHAK PERFORMANCE
Performing for a Delhi audience for the first time, Ritusri Chowdhuri and Amrita Singh settled in Kolkata, provided an evening of Kathak and Kuchipudi respectively, at the Stein auditorium....

REGALING TWOSOME FOR IIC’S MONSOON FESTIVAL

Geetanjali Acharya, a student of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, trained in Srjan, the Guru’s Odissi institution, performing at the IIC , given the brief recital, comprising the first half of the first evening, for the two-day Monsoon Festival, showed in her dance the unmistakable stylistic impact of the Guru. 

The Odissi recital was followed by a superb Bharatanatyam presentation by Apeksha Kamath, a student of Indira Kadambi of Bangalore. For the first time after a number of years, one found a dancer stressing the idea of the Monsoon (in the title of the event) as a central theme, while planning the recital....

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - The Ethics of Dance Critique: Why it matters who writes - Anita Vallabh

(The article first appeared in Global Indian Artist™ LLC, dated July 19, 2026)

In an interview, the former New York Times chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay described his work this way: “To reconcile heart and head; to show how emotion and intelligence can combine when absorbing works of art. To report on and to evoke an event for those who weren't there. To provoke and enrich discussion of dance. To help people show how many elements - how many values - go into the process of judgment.”

It's an apt description of the critic's role: feel deeply, think clearly, write truthfully. But behind those thoughts, lies an ethical terrain every dance critic must navigate.

I started critiquing in 2014 for no other reason than my love for writing and dance. My first critique was on a performance by my gurus, The Dhananjayans and published in Narthaki. Soon after, I had a conversation with my Gurus about what I had written. In that exchange, I understood the power of words and the responsibility to choose them with care.

It was then I realized that if I wished to write honestly and critically, I could not also remain a performing artist in the same spaces. I made a conscious decision to step away from the stage and commit to critiquing. In the eleven years since, apart from the occasional performance for a non-profit or community event, I have not danced publicly. My love for dancing will never vane, I think of my transition form dancer to writer as expanding the artistic canvas. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Prism - Mohiniyattam: Identity and Aesthetics - V. Kaladharan

Kerala, the south-west tip of the Indian sub-continent, can boast of giving birth to several highly evolved traditional performing arts viz. Kutiyattam, Krishnanattam, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam and Thullal, a semi-stylized solo dance-theatre narrative. Except Kutiyattam the first stage performance of which is deemed to have taken place between the 10th and the 11th century AD, the rest of the artforms came into being in the 17th century AD. Thullal dates back to the 18th century. While there are convincing evidences to establish the period of origin of Krishnanattam, Kathakali and Thullal, the history and development of Mohiniyattam prior to the establishment of Kerala Kalamandalam in the early 20th century is still shrouded in mystery not withstanding multiple references from various sources made by genuine and pretentious scholars over a period of time. Even the so called Mohiniyattam which poet laureate, Vallathol Narayan Menon, resurrected at Kerala Kalamandalam way back in the 1930's, was the remnant of its glorious past. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Interview - Odissi's Ambassador to Peru - Maria Laura Valdez Usseglio - Shyamhari Chakra

In one of the episodes of Mann Ki Baat, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed her contribution for popularising Odissi dance in the South American nation of Peru.
"In Peru, Herlinda Gonzales and Maria Valdez are popularising Bharatanatyam and Odissi dance respectively; showing how Indian classical dance is creating waves of popularity in South America," he had mentioned.

For Maria Laura Valdez Usseglio, the first and only Odissi dancer from Peru, such an important acknowledgement from the head of a country - that was her home-away-from-home for two decades - has been the ultimate honour that she could have ever aspired for as an Odissi dancer. 

Read the interview in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - Gaudiya Nritya: Analyzation on the subjects of debate - Adrita Misra

Gaudiya Nritya, at present is among the most debated dance forms of India which are yet to be considered strictly 'classical'. Despite covering the technical criteria of a classical dance form, Gaudiya Nritya faces strong criticism and opposition due to several reasons which we attempt to address and analyze here.

Gaudiya Nritya was denied the recognition based on various reasons... 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Of Chinna Nadam and periya talents! - Dance Matters: Column by Ashish Mohan Khokar

Nartanam Academy of Dance and Music (NADAM) is among Bangalore's best Kathak and Bharatanatyam teaching and performing society. Coconut is a fruit of which no part is wasted! Tender water, add protein rich fruit, even the shell makes Fab India buttons now! Then there's coir mat, rope, carpets, beds and more. Add the tree itself... Dancing in the winds when you see it! That's why NADAM is aptly located on Coconut Street! In where else? Centre of Bangalore's traditional culture - Malleswaram, the other bastion being Basavangudi. R.K. Narayan's famous book that Shankar Nag and wife Arundhati Nag made into a beautiful DD teleserial - Malgudi Days - partakes of these two wor(ld)ds Mal - (from Malleswaram) and Gudi from Basavangudi. Great ideas are simple; clutter leads to confusion. Or Confucius!

Confucius sounding, read 'sorted,' are NADAM founders Murali Mohan Kalvakalva and Nandini Mehta. Stable, sensible and solid, both have trained many, performed much and steered 25 years of Bangalore's best dance festival, nay, two festivals - Chinna Nadam for children under 13 and Periya Nadam for grown up talents in December.

It's a sheer delight to watch the young ones, all dolled up like - dolls!  

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Bharatanatyam and Neuroscience for Creative Aging - Sloka Iyengar - Not just anyBODY: a health and fitness column

I came to creative aging a few years ago through neuroscience and a series of losses in my family. Growing up in Ahmedabad, I learned Bharatanatyam at the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. My doctoral and postdoctoral work has been in neuroscience, more specifically in epilepsy; my clinical experience was with children who have refractory epilepsies. After my postdoctoral appointment, I lost my mother, mother-in-law, and a close older friend. Seeing formerly vibrant women being treated with pity and condescension when they were sick and frail, I was moved to think of ways to use my scientific and dance training to alleviate suffering, especially in older adults. I wanted to see if I could use Bharatanatyam as a vessel to provide a space where older adults can exercise their full human potential.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Book Review - Kathak and Sanskritisation? - Leela Venkataraman

At the IIC, it was an evening with a scholarly gathering to mark the release of the book by Shubhi Publications on Speaking Sculptures - Karanas in Kathak, authored by Kathak specialist Shovana Narayan.

The Natya Sastra Karanas (Hasta-pada samayogah karanamiti samjnitam), we know, are not stances, but units of movement in a coordinated conjunction of hands and feet operating in a prescribed fashion. Shovana (as other scholars), understandably looks at sculpture as the best indicator of dance movement in history. One must remember however, that the Karana is a whole unit of movement - which has been arrested at any one point of a whole movement cycle, to be captured on temple walls by the sculptor's chisel. In other words, sculptural representations comprise frozen moments of whole units of movement prescribed as a Karana. And what is caught on stone arrested at any point -and what is seen in sculpture may not necessarily show the start or the culmination. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Mixed week of folk and stylised traditions - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Treated generally to tailored, stylized fare of classical music and dance, the audience at the IIC auditorium, Delhi, seemed to get caught on the wrong foot, with the very different texture of the no-holds-barred exuberance, very much in the old Mujra style of the Lavani and Jogwa dancers from Maharashtra (performance courtesy NCZCC and Culture Ministry). Originating during 18th -19tth century Maharashtra under the Peshwas, who were great patrons of this art form, as a means of morale boosting entertainment for soldiers, Lavani  performers are mostly from among the community of Dangars (shepherds) of the Sholapur region of Maharashtra, their art a provocative blend of storytelling, dance and music, brimful of socio-political satire, built round society, religion and politics....

At the Habitat Centre’s Stein auditorium, watching the poised Bharatanatyam in the Tanjore Bani presented by Sneha Mahesh, trained under dancer Priya Murle of Chennai, one was surprised that this dancer had never before performed in Delhi. Entering the starkly bare stage, her curtain-raiser was a Muthuswamy Dikshitar composition Ananda Nadana Prakasham in raga Kedaram, one of the panchabhuta sthala kritis dedicated to Lord Shiva as the embodiment of space or akash in the Nataraja temple. Brilliant as innumerable suns, the Lord as granter of worldly pleasures and liberation, reveals himself with his dancing feet, to sages Patanjali and Vyagrapada.....

With a capital in siege for a week, understandably lean audiences at the Habitat Stein auditorium greeted both the Bharatanatyam and Pravat Kumar Swain’s group Odissi Nrutya Arpana. This writer was struck by one stark difference, in that Sneha Mahesh performed on a bare stage - with even the announcements from backstage - whereas the tastefully decorated altar for Jagannath greeting the onlookers for the Group Odissi recital led  by teacher Pravat Kumar Swain, was the starting point of prolonged formalities, which went on for over quarter of an hour – with every person known to the dance world in the audience, being called to the stage to be honoured - draped with elegant dupattas, with the hospitality involving  a bag containing other goodies!.... 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - The lullaby that awakened - Dr. Lata Surendra

The First Gurus!

'To be is to know that you are not separate, but an ongoing flow of every history gone before.'

My father was the scholar and linguist who awakened me to the magic of words. Through scriptures, chants, and books, he introduced me to friends across epochs. He taught me to romance poets who charmed my soul, and philosophers who silenced the hunger of the dust. In his eyes, I sought to dance past every milestone; he made achievement so effortless that it became a habit. Yet, when I grew too lost in the past, he gently urged, "Close the books now, dear, and read from the pages of life." Growing up under British rule, his accent was flawlessly British - to me, he was simply the ideal, and he was my own.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed. 

Anita says...August 2026

July has been 31 days of ceaseless unrest. Ablaze with arguments and heated rhetoric about issues of representation and race swapping. About translations, cinematic liberty and appropriation. The rumble became a roar with the student unrests in India that started in with a leaked examination paper and the subsequent student protests in New Delhi has rocked the government and the ripples continue as I write this monthly message. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - My Guru's greatest choreography: An institution that taught me to fall in love - Dr. Amrithasruthi Radhakrishnan

Every Guru Purnima, we celebrate the guru. This year, my gratitude extends beyond my guru to the institution she has cultivated over three decades: Natya Vriksha. I have come to recognise that the greatest choreography of dancer Geeta Chandran (Akka, as generations of us affectionately call her) may not be a work created for the stage at all. It is the institution she has built. To build an institution is among the most demanding acts of artistic practice. Choreographies conclude after the final applause, but institutions demand care every single day.

When I first entered Natya Vriksha as a young student, everyone around me believed I was rolling in a dance school, where I would acquire a vocabulary of movement and, one day, perform. Little did I know that this was where my becoming would quietly unfold. Today, whatever I have become, as a dancer, researcher, a teacher, administrator, and a cultural practitioner, has its roots there. Natya Vriksha gave me ground steady enough to take flight from, and a place to land each time I returned.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed. 

Thoughts of an 82-year-old Kathak dancer: Column by Janaki Patrik

My hair has turned white and I've celebrated my 82nd birthday. It's now patently evident that I've been around for a while! So when young Kathak dancers and their parents discover that I've been a Kathak dancer... student, performer, guru, choreographer... for 60 plus years, they sometimes ask me for advice.

I suppose they expect me to tell them to practice tatkar every day for several hours, followed by an orderly regimen of bol parhant and repetitions of chakkurs, tukras, parans, paramelu, kavita torahs etcetera etcetera etcetera .......

But that's not the advice I give. I speak more about longevity in terms of sustaining our lives as creative artists within a supportive community, and of maintaining the "life of the mind" while sharing what we know and appreciating the gifts of others. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - Guru Purnima-From darkness to light - Bana Shastri Ramanath

Guru Purnima is a special full moon day that is observed once a year. It is also celebrated to honor the birthday of the ancient enlightened Hindu Guru Veda Vyasa who organized and compiled the Vedas and authored the epic Mahabharatam - an encyclopedia of the ever-evolving human drama. As Guru Purnima approaches, I feel moved to express gratitude to my Gurus, guided by faith and a sense of responsibility shaped by my upbringing in traditional Indian culture. People of Indian heritage around the world celebrate Guru Purnima through rituals, worship, gift-giving, and other expressions of respect. When my own students offer their gratitude and appreciation on this day, I cannot ignore the meaning and significance of Guru Purnima.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - The thirty second sentence, How the 30-second loop is dismantling the Performing Arts - Dr. Lata Surendra

We have reduced the vastness of human expression, the agonizing architecture of art and the very rhythm of life to a fleeting thirty-second glance. In the modern cultural landscape, thirty seconds is no longer a mere unit of time, it is a violent trial. It is the maximum boundary of human attention before the thumb twitches, the screen changes, and the psyche shifts. Yet we wonder why a relentless, automated loop of these same thirty seconds leaves us completely reeled. We are caught in a hypnotic vertigo, spun around by a carousel of fragments that mimic depth but offer only a momentary spark. Time it was, when surrender to the aesthetics cradling art was ever so vital. To watch a classical dancer trace the geometry of grief across a stage; to hear a vocalist hold a single, trembling note until it fractured the silence, or to witness a theatrical monologue build its emotional scaffolding over the course of hours - these required a shared covenant of time. It was absolutely 'a transaction' of presence. Today, that covenant is broken. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

Article - Guru and Sishya: The sacred bond then and now - Vazhuvoor Saravanan

A Modern Dilemma

A boy known to me was deeply inclined to learn the Veena. After consistent prayers, he found his Guru near Adyar, Chennai. Both considered themselves lucky - the Guru found a devoted disciple, and the sishya a knowledgeable teacher.

However, despite the boy's sincerity and perfect attendance, he soon experienced disheartening neglect. His Guru frequently took long breaks for personal commitments, leaving the student in tears. On one occasion, the boy confirmed his class by phone a day before and again an hour in advance, only to travel to the teacher's house and be turned away at the door by the Guru's husband, who stated she was suffering from a headache and resting. The young boy was shattered - not by the tiring public commute, but by the callous treatment and lack of concern. Today, this mutual loss of respect and devotion between teacher and student has become all too common. 

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.

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.

Read more in the site

Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.