Resources
Dance Routes research projects have generated several valuable resources for self-study available to dance students, art historians and others interested in a composite view of Indian culture, dance and spirituality. Three aspects of Odissi’s background have been focused on, i.e. its temple ritual background, its adaptation of living folk performing arts, and its connection to yogic and tantric sadhana.
Odissi – A Dance of Sculpture
Odishan temple architecture gave irrefutable and tangible evidence in favour of Odissi’s claim to be accepted as a classical Indian dance form after its creation in the mid-twentieth century. The use of sculpted body postures, their underlying grid lines and proportions as seen on temple walls, as well as their philosophical meanings were carefully studied and incorporated into dance by Odissi’s founding Gurus. Understanding these resources explains why Odissi’s movement language is so distinctive. This has been discussed in a documentary video, exhibition and book entitled ‘Odissi – A Dance of Sculpture’.
Video
Odissi – A Dance of Sculpture
The video in two parts is currently being hosted on the Routledge Performance Archive, and available through this website on request.
‘Odissi – A Dance of Sculpture’ traces the evolution of dance as ritual worship in the medieval temples of Odisha, Eastern India. Using sculpture carved upon the walls of these ancient shrines, the story begins more than 2000 years ago in the early Jain caves of Udaigiri, and culminates in the magnificent 13th century temple of Konark where Odishan temple architecture achieved its final flowering.
This 2-part documentary is a unique educational resource that follows in the footsteps of the pioneering work by Dr. Kapila Vatsayan, bringing together architecture, sculpture, religion and dance. It serves as a valuable contribution to the understanding of the inter-related threads of India’s cultural heritage. The DVD comes with an illustrated script and maps so that visitors to Odisha can make their own informed search of the ritual that inspired the creation of Odissi in 20th century India.
Duration : 48 minutes approx.|
Format : DVD/PAL
Code : DR DVD 001
Written, Produced and Directed by Dance Routes
Book
Odissi – A Dance of Sculpture
Notes & Acknowledgments
Dance, as a temple ritual, occurred in Odisha without interruption for many centuries. The photographs in this book, with their accompanying notes, are used to trace this ritual by looking at the architectural and sculptural developments that took place between the 6th and 13th centuries AD. These milestones from the past mark how a religious environment developed where the dance ritual took centre stage in the community’s worship.
All the sites described here are indicated in the maps drawn by Shri Rabindranath Sahu at the back of the book. These are in and around Bhubaneswar, so within easy access of the State capital. They allow for a first-hand, informed experience of how these temple environments changed in form and detail, becoming grander and richer with each century as the dance tradition unfolded. Our focus has been on the gradual ‘coming of age’ of the sculptural, languorous maiden (alasakanya) motif on temple surfaces. It was this image that inspired the physical shape Odissi took when it was born in the 20th century as an Indian classical dance art.
A description of the evolving temple structure, on which the motif appeared, required using some technical terms that appear in italics in the text, and have been explained in the Glossary for easy reference. This temple body represented a map of the universe, and the idea of performing within a form viewed as the Body of God has remained a source of inspiration for dancers even today. Indeed, embodying sacred space through dance is a dominant idea in the choreographic works that are being created across the Odissi tradition.
The photographs used are from a collection made up of many years of audio and visual documentation of Odishan architecture, sculpture, painting, folk and tribal music, as well as other relevant materials to the study of Odishan dance history that was carried out by Dance Routes in Bhubaneswar, and subsequently entrusted to the Kai Trust in 2007. Our current endeavour is to make this archive accessible.
We would like to thank the Archaeological Survey of India for granting us permission to take photographs. We were greatly helped in some of the temple photography by Robyn Beeche who will always have our heartfelt gratitude, and by Dilip Dhirsamant, a Bhubaneswar-based photographer. Dance photographs are by Robyn, Lalit Verma, Avinash Pasricha and Henry Stein. We would also like to thank Dharmesh Jadeja and his team for their support in mounting an exhibition of the photographs at the Kala Kendra Gallery in Bharat Nivas, Auroville. The exhibition drew its storyline from a documentary of the same title that was first published by Dance Routes in 2005, and this book further expands on the exhibition. It was the very warm response of visitors to the event that spurred the making of this publication.
Michael Weston
Rekha Tandon
Exhibition
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE DEVADASI
‘In the Footsteps of the Devadasi’ explores the evolution of religious and philosophical ideas, resulting in the ritual of dance by women before deities, through iconography and ornamentation in Odishan temple sculpture. The photographic content eloquently highlights how classical Indian Odissi dance drew its physical and spiritual inspiration directly from medieval Odishan temple architecture. The ornamental motif of the alasakanya, or languorous maiden, seen so profusely on its walls, provides a visual directory of permutations and combinations of the body and its limbs, around the template of the classical tribhanga. This ‘three-bends of the body’s central axis’ is pivotal to Odissi’s distinctive grace and sensuality.
The exhibition also demonstrates how a significant coming together of different religious ideas documented by the temples’ iconography heralded the growth of tantra, where worshippers could participate in rituals, and dancers, consecrated as devadasi, or the ‘servants-wives of God’, performed as a mortgage offering on behalf of the king and kingdom.
The Gotipua Dance Archive
The Gotipua Dance Archive was created with support from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) by Michael Weston, and provides an in-depth view of the Gotipua dance tradition around the pilgrim town of Puri in Odisha. It is an archival record of Dance Routes’ work during and after the ‘Raghurajpur Lila project’ initiated by INTACH in 2005. This aimed at establishing Raghurajpur, birth place of Odissi’s famed Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, as a ‘model rural tourism village’ for Odisha.
The archive also includes Dance Routes’ documentation of Gotipua songs and compositions of different Gurus, and the creation of its own mixed-media performances combining the skills of Gotipua dancers with pattachitra painters. ‘Dhara’ and ‘Yatra’, two full-length works, were performed extensively by the Dance Routes’ repertory group over many years, seamlessly weaving together the movement language of hatha yoga, acrobatics and Odissi to original soundtracks, whilst incorporating natural sounds and ritual chants from the region.
The archive is freely available online in three parts:
Part 1 – The Children of Jagannath
A video-documentary about Dance Routes’ ten-year story with the Gotipuas, watching them train, grow, travel and perform new choreography created by Dance Raoutes to audiences both in India and abroad.
Part 2 – Perspectives on Odissi
Curated video interviews by eminent Oriya artists on how folk resources were ‘classicised’ for the creation of Odissi dance, using melodic, rhythmic and movement elements principally from the Gotipua tradition.
Part 3 – The Interviews
The complete interviews, with details of all the contributors and an account of their lives.
Interview 1 – Shri A Mahapatra (Theatre Director)
Interview 2 – Guru GK Behera (Theatre Artiste)
Interview 3 – Guru B Maharana (Mardala Artiste)
Interview 4 – Guru Maguni Das (Gurukul leader)
Interview 5 – Shri Sarat Das (Gurukul leader)
Interview 6 – Pandit R Panigrahi (Vocal Artiste)
Interview 7 – Guru Lingaraj Barik (Gotipua Guru)
Part 4 – Photo Gallery
A library of photographs of the Gotipuas and their environment.
VIDEO LINKS
Epilogue to Children of Jagannath
The Gotipua Dance Archive, 2023
https://www.icharchive.intach.org/Gotipua/index
Conference Excerpts:
1 Guru GK Behera
2 Guru Banamali Maharana
3 Pandit R Panigrahi
4 Shri A Mahapatra
5 Shri Sarat Das
6 Epilogue
Dance as Yoga
The similarities in the approach to the dancing body across the Indian dance forms had always intrigued me. Their use of filigree-patterned footwork, hand gestures or hastamudras, the emphasis placed on holding the central axis vertical, and the characteristic opening of the knees and lowering of the body towards the earth as an almost constant stance, created a distinctive energy vortex in space while dancing. Experientially, I had understood this to cause a transformation of consciousness from the mundane to the divine i.e. from being confined to the body and its me-story, to dissolving into a larger space and into the character of the deity being invoked or described.
My parallel engagement in yoga and tantra both as a researcher and practitioner, made it clear to me that these traditions have based their techniques on a shared understanding of the body not as a fixed object, but as a layered process of constantly moving energy. Unravelling this vision of the body remains ongoing and the published materials listed below describe personal milestones in this endeavour.
SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP
Academia.edu
The Symbiotic Relationship between Indian Dance and the Yogic Chakras
AI-generated Abstract
This paper explores the intersection of Indian classical dance and yogic philosophy, particularly the relationship between dance techniques and the concept of Kundalini energy. It argues that traditional Indian dance, while focused on maintaining its classical form, has the potential to reconnect with its spiritual essence through the integration of yogic practices. By proposing a new choreography that honors classical roots while satisfying contemporary needs, the work underscores the timeless relevance of these artistic traditions.
ABSTRACT – 3 BINDU APPROACH
Ideas around sacred geometry in the Indian tradition are most clearly seen in the prolific use of yantras as tools of meditation in tantric art forms. These are typically two-dimensional diagrams or three-dimensional objects, regarded as representing the elemental powers of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether commonly symbolised by a square, circle, triangle, hexagon and a dot or bindu respectively. These geometric shapes are combined to create energy fields of varying potencies within which sacred objects are conceived. Temple architecture in India is imbued with such yantras and used as a means of harnessing divine energies through their precision, power and beauty. While Odissi dance has been greatly inspired by the dance rituals of mediaeval Odishan temples, there has been no discussion about the possible role of yantras in actual movement and choreography. This is surprising as the ‘virtual lines’ held between different body parts in static dance postures as used in the dance tradition today, hold strong geometric shapes. This is amplified by movement sequences where the arms, hands, legs and feet create geometric forms in space, making patterns akin to ‘virtual yantras’. This recognition piqued my curiosity and the current paper is a self-reflexive account of a process of engaging with Odissi movement through visualising clarity of shape and form in movement patterns, before embodying them, based on a template of ‘3 Bindus on the body’s central axis’, which was formulated during the course of studio practice.
Articles
LINKED to LINK TREE:
Practice and Research in Odissi Dance: The 3 Bindu Approach to Embodying Sacred Geometry, JAArd, www.worlduniversityofdesign.ac.in, July 2023
The Symbiotic Relationship between Indian Dance and the Yogic Chakras, Narivada series (Gender and Representation), IGNCA, February 2008
NOT LINKED
Dhara – the Flow of a Dance Tradition Indian Horizons, Volume 54, July – September 2007
Classical Odissi Dance: Negotiating a New Path INTACH Virasat Commemorative Issue-Vision 2020, New Delhi, November 2004
Rethinking the Gurukul, Rasmanjari, New Delhi, August 2002
Perspectives on Odissi Kala Vikash Kendra, Cuttack Commemorative Volume, Cuttack Odisha 1999.
The Spontaneity of Movement The India Magazine, Volume 14, New Delhi, September 1994