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ADF review: Indian dance emsemble enchants with ode to feminine

energy

 

By Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell : The Herald-Sun

cgreenlee

Jul 4, 2003 : 8:17 pm ET

 

DURHAM -- Had Surupa Sen lived 2,000 years ago, she might have

ritually "married" a Hindu god and performed dances of praise and

pleasure exclusive to his temple.

 

But Tuesday evening, 33-year-old Sen and four other members of

India's Nrityagram Dance Ensemble entranced a packed house at Duke's

Reynolds Industries Theater. And Sen's present-day devotion is to

Indian classical dance and her work as Nrityagram's artistic

director.

 

In their first American Dance Festival appearance, Nrityagram

presented Sen's four-part ode to feminine energy, "Sri: In Search of

the Goddess." The all-female troupe seemed to channel that power into

the rigorous Odissi dance.

 

One of the seven Indian classical dances, Odissi originated almost

2,000 years ago in the northeastern state of Orissa. Discouraged into

near-extinction by British colonialists, Odissi was revived in the

1950s by gurus and scholars who pieced together scenes from temple

art and manuscripts.

 

It must have been a wickedly difficult reconstruction job. Odissi is

a physical language that demands potently precise and symbolic

movements to match its frequent theme, the exploits of deities. One

Odissi principle, the tribhangi, dictates that when the torso moves

one way, the head and hips must go the other.

 

As the Reynolds audience saw Tuesday, eternally flexing fingers,

lively feet and beckoning eyes are Nrityagram's favored instruments.

Index fingers and thumbs often connected in the circle of infinity.

 

Nrityagram's movement repertoire includes 28 meaningful movements for

the eye alone. With subtle eye alterations, the women became demure

maiden, coquette, ingenue or spiritual devotee.

 

In "Srimayi," soloist Bijayini Satpathy translated traditional Odissi

movement. To Sen's narration of a poem about the love affair of

immortals Krishna and Radha, Satpathy slowly broke down the

accompanying movements. Then, she danced them -- with a charmingly

choreographed smile.

 

Images of Indian mythology appeared throughout "Sri," even as it

embraced elements of modern dance. In the abstract opener, "Sri

Savitri," the women slid down each other's backs, rolled together

with legs and feet intertwined. Not unusual movements, in and of

themselves, but revolutionary in the no-contact world of Indian

classical dance.

 

Then, these Odissi acolytes replicated the stance of Nataraja, the

many-armed dancing alter-ego of god Shiva. With the light behind

them, we could believe, for a nanosecond, that we had witnessed a

sacred transfiguration -- from stage to temple and from women to

goddesses.

 

There was more than a hint of magic about Nrityagram and its members,

including Ayona Bhaduri, Priyambada Pattanaik and Pavithra Reddy. But

much of the magic is skill. Sen and company live and work in the

Nrityagram village, outside Bangalore, India. To join the

professional ranks, they trained for six years in relative isolation.

All the better to create.

 

Concentration shows in the mastery of delicate (and sometimes barely

distinguishable) gestures; the untrembling strength of their crouches

and squats; and how they distribute their weight -- feet turning

feather-light as if they walked on air one moment, and then pounding

the floor with resounding thuds.

 

These feet seem to say -- because in Odissi, body parts do speak --

"we touch this earth but we are not quite of it."