Festival that had little to cheer about

BHUBANESWAR: Bhubaneswar’s annual cultural calendar is now dotted with a large number of dance and music festivals which are often being billed as national. But very few of these festivals have been national in character and the recently concluded Ekamra national dance and music festival was one such event that lacked strength to be called a national festival.Hosted at Jayadev Bhawan by the city-based Suravi Odissi dance institution, this three-day festival reserved a day for the students’ of the host organisation while it did not have representation of five of the eight Indian classical dance styles while the music segment had just an instrumental orchestra by the local artistes. Moreover, with the black backdrop of the stage fixed with three big banners prominently exhibiting the names and logos of the donors and partners, the stage aesthetics was totally lost. One would expect that a festival that is being hosted for the past nine years also grows in stature, year after year.The festival this year showcased five Odissi soloists – Kabita Dwibedi and Jyoti Srivastava (both from New Delhi who were conferred Suravi Samman for the year by the hosts); Rajashree Biswas (Kolkata); Minati Pradhan and Rajashree Praharaj (both from Bhubaneswar). Bharatanatyam and Kathak were represented by two Kolkata-based young dancers – Arupa Lahiry and Sohini Debnath – respectively. The exclusive orchestra with percussion instruments – Badya Madhuri - was composed and conducted by mardal exponent Dhaneswar Swain along with four percussionists.While Kabita and Jyoti, both well-known senior dancers and familiar to the connoisseurs impressed with their graceful expressions and stage presence, the two talented and young dancers – both sharing the same name of Rajashree – exhibited their technical finesse. The most mature and memorable performance of the festival, however, came from Bhubaneswar’s Minati Pradhan who performed her guru late Gangadhar Pradhan’s choreography with élan. With incredibly perfect tribhanga and chouka of the body, the dancer was sculpturesque in her stances and poses.Though Arupa and Sohini are promising dancers, both failed to bring in their best into their respective performances for silly mistakes. While Arupa’s costume went loose forcing her to leave the stage for a while and thus losing her concentration in her abhinaya, poor quality of the recorded music was the bane for Sohini.