NCPA Nrityagurukul 2025-2026 – Day 2

Guru Shishya Parampara

Vajragovinda-daśāvatāram
Natya Shastra by Sayak Mitra, Pinki Mondal, Shreetama Chowdhury Disciples of Guru Piyal Bhattacharya

Vakrākāra
Odissi by Anoushka Rahman,Daquil Miriyala, Namaha Mazoomdar- Disciples of Guru Surupa Sen

Human life is envisioned as a journey unfolding through ten progressive stages, from conception to embodied existence, where consciousness gradually takes material form. These ten stages of formation have long been mirrored in the symbolism of Vishnu’s ten avatāras, framing human life itself as a cosmological process. Vajragovinda-daśāvatāram brings this vision to the stage through the classical form of the bhāṇikā, where meaning is conveyed not through narrative but through a finely attuned synthesis of movement, voice, music, and inner emotion. The performer’s body becomes the site of knowledge, re-embodying the passage of consciousness through elements—earth, water, fire, air, and space—and revealing life as a continuous circulation between cosmos and self. Drawing from Jayadeva’s Daśāvatāra and Vajrayāna interpretations of the avatāra paradigm, this performance by three actor-dancers—Sayak Mitra, Pinki Mondal, and Shreetama Chowdhury—explores the physical, verbal, and cosmological dimensions of Vajragovinda-daśāvatāram, transforming the stage into a living confluence of body, time, and the universe.

Vakrākāra – A living curve. The arc of an Odissi dancer becoming.

Vakrākāra – the curved form – is the signature of Odissi: a line that does not travel straight, but deepens, bends, listens. Here, the body becomes sculpture in motion; rhythm becomes breath; stillness carries its own pulse. Drawn from Odissi’s luminous geometry – its spirals, soft angles, and poised asymmetries – this student showcase unfolds like a single garland of dance, composed of many offerings, each revealing a different facet of the living curve.

At Nrityagram, tradition is not something held at a distance. It is entered. Returned to. Repeated until it begins to speak from within. In the quiet constancy of practice, technique becomes devotion: repetition refines attention, discipline shapes presence, and form ripens into feeling.

Across the arc of the program, the curve becomes both design and destiny: Odissi’s sculpted line unfolding in space, and each student’s own inner arc of becoming revealed – step by step, breath by breath – through dance.