Dance for Dance 2025 - Day Three

Day Three

The third and final day served as a testament to the festival’s mission: a bridge between the precision of the solo practitioner and the expansive vision of the ensemble.

Divya Hoskere: Sita in Nature

The evening commenced with the premiere of Vanavasini by Divya Hoskere, featured as part of the Kalavaahini scholarship showcase. The performance opened with an invocatory piece that set a high poetic bar, utilising a striking metaphor by poet Shatavadhani R. Ganesh: Sita as the spark of lightning, Rama as the dark cloud, and Lakshmana as the cooling breeze. Hoskere’s movement successfully captured this elemental synergy, where the ‘union of cloud and lightning’ brings relief to a parched land.

In the main segment, inspired by the Valmiki Ramayana, Hoskere explored the journey of the trio away from Ayodhya to the ashrama of Sage Atri. While portraying the interaction between Sita and the austere Anasuya, Hoskere navigated the subtle shifts in character with a command that marks her as one of the most promising dancers of her generation. Her versatility was most evident in the way she integrated complex nritta within the narrative arc.

While the production was engaging, it occasionally felt like it was searching for a firmer emotional anchor to delineate the transitions between the narrative acts.

Christopher Gurusamy: The Anatomy of Joy

The mood shifted with Christopher Gurusamy’s Aananda - Dance of Joy. He opened with Vanamai, an invocation to the feminine principle. From a point of contemplative stillness, Gurusamy’s movement expanded with a clean, geometric intensity that suggested the birth of the cosmos. However, it was the Nattakurinji varnam, Sami naan undhan adimai that acted as the production’s soul. Gurusamy reimagined the piece as a dialogue with dance itself, filling the sancharis with the narrative of his own life — learning, falling, rising, and evolving. His energy was a force of nature- intense and virile, yet punctuated by a startling softness that ebbed and flowed with Aditya Narayanan’s vocal embellishments.

The concluding tillana in raga Kannada, composed by K. Arun Prakash, pivoted toward a shared ethical responsibility, urging care for the Earth. Gurusamy’s performance pointed to joy in dance as something that emerges from sustained engagement with movement, rather than from momentary expression.

Odissi Expanded

The festival reached a grand conclusion with Odissi Vision and Movement Centre’s (OVM) production, Pagdandi – The Winding Footway, choreographed by the acclaimed Sharmila Biswas. OVM has solidified its status as a
premier ensemble, and this production demonstrated why, pushing the boundaries of Odissi while remaining firmly within its rhythmic soul.

The first piece, Abarthan Bibarthan, was a complex exploration of the tala traditions of Odisha. Using a diverse array of percussion instruments, the piece created a soundscape that felt like a journey through rural Odisha. The choreography was strikingly fresh; Sharmila utilised sticks as props, adding a percussive layer that turned the dance into a rhythmic game. The ensemble’s entries and exits had a cinematic quality, moving like a film reel before the audience’s eyes.

Sharmila herself took center stage in Vilasini, a deeply personal tribute to the Mahari tradition. Portraying an elderly, retired dancer, she moved through her room draped in the invisible fineries of her youth; alternating between a childlike innocence and a sincere, honest elderly grace. The sequence where she dressed herself in silk and bells only she could see was a masterclass in sahaja abhinaya, grounding the classical form in hyper-realistic human experience.

The production then moved into Srishti Tatva, a reimagining of the Dasavatar. This was not the standard portrayal. Instead, Sharmila incorporated animalistic movements that required immense agility and deflections of the body. The dancers were competent and untiring, mimicking the essence of the animal incarnations with an effortlessness that belied the difficulty of the movements. The work ended with Murchana Vaadhya, an exuberant ode to the mridanga as the hub of community life.

By the end of  Day three, the Kalavaahini festival had succeeded in presenting a vibrant tapestry. The message was clear dance is a living, breathing archive of our past and a visionary map for our future.

By Pranati Goturi

PHOTOS : R. Prasanna Venkatesh