Odissi

Odissi is the dance of Odisha, recognisable at once by the tribhanga, a triple bend of the body at neck, waist and knee that no other Indian classical form uses as its base. It is soft where Bharatanatyam is linear, and its poses are taken directly from the sculpture of the Konark and Mukteswar temples, which is both the claim and the evidence: a dancer can be matched to a carving. It was danced in the Jagannath temple by the maharis and in the streets by the gotipuas, boys dressed as girls, and the modern form was reconstructed in the 1950s from both.

The two basic stances are chauka, a square open position associated with Jagannath, and tribhanga, the triple bend. A recital runs mangalacharan, an invocation with a salute to the earth; batu, pure dance in the chauka; pallavi, in which a raga is elaborated with the body as the music elaborates it; an abhinaya item, usually from the Gita Govinda; and moksha to close. The Gita Govinda of Jayadeva, a twelfth century Odia text on Radha and Krishna, is the literary heart of the repertoire.

A child begins at five or six. The first years are the bhangis and the belly and torso control the tribhanga needs, which is the hardest physical adjustment for a student coming from another form. Five to eight years brings the first full recital. The gotipua training, for the boys, is far more acrobatic and begins younger, with bandha nrutya contortions learnt while the body is still soft, and a gotipua’s performing life traditionally ended at puberty.

Three streams fed the reconstruction: the maharis, the temple dancers of Jagannath, whose line had nearly ended by the twentieth century; the gotipuas, the boy dancers, who had continued; and the sculpture and the texts. Four gurus did the work in the 1950s: Kelucharan Mohapatra, Pankaj Charan Das, Deba Prasad Das and Mayadhar Raut, each a gotipua or mahari connected performer, and the four styles named after them still differ. Whether the result is a revival or a creation is argued; the gurus themselves were open that they were building a concert form, and the documentation of what they built from is better than for most Indian revivals.

Odisha

Puri and Bhubaneswar are the home, with the four gurus’ lines, the gotipua akhadas still training boys, and the Konark festival each December.

Bengal

Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda is claimed by Bengal and Odisha both, and the Bengali Vaishnava tradition sings the same text.

Deities

• Jagannath
• Krishna
• Siva

Festivals

• Jagannath Rath Yatra
• Navaratri begins

Temples

• Sri Jagannath Temple, Puri
• Konark Sun Temple

Related arts

• Bharatanatyam