Dancer Bijayini Satpathy confronts myths of classical, contemporary Odissi

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “I wanted to experience Odissi differently,” Indian dance artist Bijayini Satpathy said. Satpathy has been a practitioner of classical Odissi Indian dance for 40 years, and she was a performer with India’s foremost Nrityagram Dance Ensemble for more than 20.

She said she had an epiphany in 2019 that urged her to take a closer look at the traditions shaping the form. She stepped away from the acclaimed company to craft her choreographic debut, “Abhipsaa—A Seeking.”

The Center for the Performing Arts will make space on the Eisenhower Auditorium stage for intimate performances of her work at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 18 and 19. Both performances will feature general-admission, on-stage seating. Visit Bijayini Satpathy online for more information.

Keepers of the classical Odissi dance form weave its meaningful storytelling with rituals and sacred themes as told through sculpturous and curvaceous movements. Each posture is complex in its limb position and its relation to other limbs and the body. The tradition as it is commonly practiced is more than 2,000 years old but was reconstructed in the past 60 years or so.

“So it’s traditional,” Satpathy said of the form. “At the same time, it’s extremely modern, because modern minds are contributing to its evolution now. And I think just being situated in between the tradition and the future development of the form had something to do with my mind wanting to explore it differently.”

The myth of ‘classical’ Indian dance

According to Satpathy, when we say “classical” anything, there are assumptions made about what that might be. Odissi is an amalgamation of all the ritualistic dance traditions that have existed throughout India’s history, Satpathy said, adding that her artistic journey also involved recognizing the controversy that exists within the artform itself.

Traditional Odissi dance was highly ritualistic, gracefully fluid and suppressed by the British and local government, she explained.

“The term ‘classical’ doesn’t have an Indian language translation. It translates to ‘shastra,’ a written pedagogy that’s been there for a long time,” she said. “When that becomes a movement tradition, then it is what we call ‘classical,’ because of the long colonization and British looking down upon the dance tradition that was just the way it was practiced.

“Even though this term ‘classical’ is controversial, it perhaps needed to be brought in for the dance form to live. Otherwise, all the practices would have been completely banned, and the practice would have stopped,” Satpathy said. “It was a clever way for people who were really interested to keep it alive by saying, ‘Just call it classical.’

Pushing boundaries to become contemporary

Satpathy said in all the years she practiced Odissi, she grew to feel that not enough energy was devoted to developing the form itself.

“Each posture is extremely complex, because there’s so many layers of limb positions and their relationships. Everything works at the same time," she said. “But when you deconstruct each one of them and create and emphasize one aspect, then you find newness in that movement or possibilities.”

She said the stories portrayed in “Abhipsaa” are her own as translated by her body from the visual language of Odissi.

“This is where it becomes contemporary,” she said. “I believe in this journey in essence but not in the exact structuring of it. I am breaking structure in the way the sequencing of choreography has happened and finding other layers that have not been looked at.”

Not your tradition? Not a problem

“I feel like Odissi is extremely specific in the tradition it comes out of, but it’s no longer practiced as a temple ritual, it’s not a salon dance. It’s come onto the proscenium stage,” Satpathy said. “And one doesn't need to become narrow singular focus to Odissi or Orissa culture to be able to do dance."

Her perspective runs complementary to evolving attitudes toward diversity, which makes now a good time to open up her research and her art to people who may not be familiar with the rich history, bold strength and narrative power of Odissi, Satpathy said.

“I feel like my audience now, whether it is in India or anywhere in the world, are coming from diverse backgrounds, in their religious beliefs or nonreligious. But as human beings, we have certain common points,” she said. “We feel the emotions, the relationships, the seeking.”