Bhubaneswar: Nine Odissi dancers from the US and one from the UK as well as another team of 10 students from city-based XIMB Saturday participated in the 5th Monks, Caves and Kings – the weekly heritage walk in the Twin Hills.
The guest dancers were overwhelmed to see the earliest depiction of dance forms carved in stone.
The dancers led by Revital Carroll, a student of Odissi Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, Guru Bichitrananda Swain and Guru Sujata Mohapatra, who now has her own Odissi dance school `Shakti Bhakti’ in USA and inspires people to learn the classical dance form.
Carroll says that the dancers will stay in Orissa for about three weeks and during their stay they would like to learn lots of things about the Odissi, its origin, costume, accompanying instruments etc.
“I love the place so much because the Temple City showcases the ancient temple art amidst the modern development,” says Rumy Narayanan, who is learning Odissi from Carroll at Shakti Bhakti in California.
“I am delighted that the heritage walk in Udayagiri-Khandagiri hills is also enlightening us about the historical genesis of the dance form,’’ Rumy, who is visiting Orissa for the first time, said
On the other hand, the XIMB students found the rock-cut caves astonishing and enjoyed the walk to the fullest. They took plenty of selfies to freeze the moments.
“It was nice to know so many things from this heritage walk as we came across things like caves of monks, rock-cut art, rock art, beautiful carvings, man-elephants relationship and conflicts and several sociological angles of the ancient society,” Avichal, a student of XIMB, remarked.
Ankeeta Dash and Kriti Singh were happy to meet the Odissi dancers from the US, who joined the heritage walk. “We are having two walks in the city now with different themes. We should have more such events so that Bhubaneswar can present a plethora of options before the foreign visitors to choose from and discover the beautiful city in a better way,” they observed.
The participants also found guide Satya Swarup Mishra’s information on the caves valuable. “We do not know which one came first – the monks or the caves or the kings, but interestingly at Udayagiri there are ancient caves depicting art of the pre-historic era and it proves that the caves might be there from much before the beginning of Jainism or the reign of Emperor Kharavela,” Satya said.
While there were more than 100 caves during the ancient period, currently their number is less than 40. It is likely that many of them have been demolished during procurement of huge stones, for temple building work in the Ekamra Kshetra.’’
PNN
