Bhubaneswar hosts 2nd Navapallava dance festival to promote young artists

BHUBANESWAR: In a bid to promote young Odissi artists prominent Odissi Gurus like Aruna Mohanty and Ratikanta Mohapatra organised ‘Navapallava’ dance festival on Saturday. The Navapallava series, hosted by eminent dance gurus across various cities in India, provides a dignified platform for promising classical dancers between 25 and 40 years of age to showcase their talent and art form.
"Navapallava is a festival for reaching out to serious, young dancers with quality in a better way.This is a national initiative taken up by senior dancers and Gurus who would select youngsters based on their talent and provide them with a platform and audience," said Odissi Guru and secretary of Odisha Dance Academy, Aruna Mohanty.

The evening featured a Bharatanatyam recital by young danseuse Divya Ravi from Bangalore and an Odissi presentation by Sasmita Panda from Cuttack. The main objective of the festival being organised in different cities across the country is to break the trend of 'pay and perform' in classical dance and music festivals.
“There has been a growing trend that festival organisers are taking huge money from young dancers for providing them with a platform. As part of the culture, many dancers are being exploited by the organisers who neither provide them with travel expense nor any accommodation. These types of festivals are organised in large numbers across the country, which are over-crowded with mediocre dancers,” said Odissi Guru and director of Srjan, Ratikant Mohapatra.
The initiative was taken up by Ashok Jain of SPICMACAY against payment for performance and to help and support young and promising artists with remuneration and respect for their performance with travel and accommodation facilities, said Mohapatra.
Keeping the audience engaged with their neat movements and commendable stage presence, both Divya and Sasmita performed a dance in a graceful and dignified manner and enthralled the audience.
"Many brilliant artists belonged to financially weaker background lost in the mad-rush of pay and perform a culture. I am grateful to the seniors who came forward to help talented and needy artists not only by providing a dignified platform but quality audience and remuneration as well," said young Odissi dancer Sasmita Panda, a disciple of senior Odissi dancer Meera Das, and member of the Gunjan repertory.
This was the second edition of Navapallava held in Bhubaneswar several festivals under this series in different cities including Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi.
"It is heartening to see the entire artists’ community who came together to support these promising dancers in continuing the legacy of their art form,' Mohapatra added.