Nakshatra Dance Festival – Day 3

Chaturvidh
Odissi by Sharmila Biswas & Troupe
Sheela
Bharatanatyam by Dr. Sandhya Purecha & Troupe

Sharmila Biswas is one of India’s leading Odissi dancers, choreographers, teachers and researchers, with over three decades of pioneering work in Indian classical dance. A disciple of Kelucharan Mohapatra, she is widely recognised for expanding the artistic vocabulary of Odissi through innovative explorations of its content, technique and costume aesthetics, while drawing deeply from the traditional performing and visual arts of Odisha. She is the founder and director of the Odissi Vision & Movement Centre (OVM), a premier institution known for its interdisciplinary pedagogy, and the Creative Director of Nanritam, which promotes arts education among rural children in Purulia, West Bengal. She conducts workshops across India and the US. An accomplished author, her publications include Knowing Odissi and the biographical volume Offstage with Sharmila Biswas. Her numerous honours include the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2012), Uday Shankar Award, Mahari Award and fellowships from the Ministry of Culture and the Sangeet Natak Akademi.

Chaturvidh is a four-part Odissi production that celebrates the diverse expressions of Odisha’s rich cultural heritage. The dances have emerged through Biswas’s years of engagement with the state’s traditional art forms, her experiences in different forms of training and the wisdom preserved in India’s classical treatises on performance. Through this process, she has sought to rediscover and redefine the essential Odissi repertoire for herself, while remaining rooted in the timeless marga. This work reflects her effort to look beyond the outward structure of the repertoire and understand the logic, philosophy and aesthetics that govern it, creating space for new artistic insights.

(Sharmila Biswas is part of the Nrityagurukul programme)

Bharatanatyam exponent Dr. Sandhya Purecha is the current chairperson of the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi. She has previously served as the chair of W20 under India’s G20 Presidency. She is hailed as one of the country’s foremost performing academicians and is an illustrious dancer, choreographer, author, scholar and researcher. She is the most senior disciple of Parvati Kumar, with whom she has trained in the guru-shishya tradition. Evolving into an artiste of matchless individuality, she earned her doctorate in ‘Natyashastra in Theory and Practice of Angika Abhinaya in Bharatanatyam’. She also established the Bharata College of Fine Arts & Culture, affiliated with Kavikulaguru Kalidas Sanskrit University, Nagpur. The college is actively immersed in classical dance performance and pedagogy based on ancient Sanskrit treatises and ancillary studies, providing academic sanction to students who wish to pursue dance as a full-time career. Dr. Purecha is a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Hirkani Award by Doordarshan Kendra Mumbai, Gaurav Puraskar by the Government of Gujarat and Gujarat Sangeet Natak Academy, and Maharashtra State Cultural Award by the Government of Maharashtra, among others.

Sheela is a thematic dance-theatre production that presents the various sheelas (temperaments or dispositions) described in the samanya abhinaya chapter of the Natyashastra through female characters. It features dialogues in a blend of Sanskrit and Hindi, with a distinct female character representing each sheela and incorporating expressive cues (bhava indicators) drawn from the Natyashastra.

Box Office: 09th September for Members & 12th September for Public.