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Thursday, July 10, 2025

The beauty of Odissi on display at Naparima Bowl

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6 days ago
20250703

The beau­ty of Odis­si, the old­est sur­viv­ing clas­si­cal dance of In­dia, was on full dis­play in Arpanam, a pro­duc­tion by San­dra Sookdeo’s Kala Mandir at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do.

A ma­jor an­cient In­di­an clas­si­cal dance that orig­i­nat­ed in the tem­ples of Odisha, an east­ern coastal state of In­dia, Odis­si was per­formed pre­dom­i­nant­ly by women and ex­pressed re­li­gious sto­ries and spir­i­tu­al ideas

An Odis­si per­for­mance reper­toire in­cludes in­vo­ca­tion, nrit­ta (pure dance), nritya (ex­pres­sive dance), natya (dance dra­ma) and mok­sha (dance cli­max con­not­ing sal­va­tion of the soul and spir­i­tu­al re­lease).

Sookdeo, the founder of Kala Mandir, stud­ied the Odis­si style of clas­si­cal dance un­der the guid­ance of Shri Prat­ap and Priya Pawar from 1976 to 1980 and con­tin­ued her train­ing with the late Shri Pradeep Shankar from 1980.

In 1987, she was award­ed a schol­ar­ship by the gov­ern­ment of T&T and In­dia to study dance at the Shri­ram Bharatiya Kala Kendra in Del­hi. There she ma­jored in Odis­si un­der the ex­pert guid­ance of Gu­ru Mayad­har Raut

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing in 1991, Sookdeo opened her dance school, Kala Mandir, at her home on Munroe Road, Cunu­pia.

The first half of Arpanam was a recital while the sec­ond half was a bal­let pre­sen­ta­tion.


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