For the love of Odissi, these girls have made dance their answer to life’s challenges

Dance has helped them overcome extreme poverty. Through their sheer dedication, six girls of a Bhubaneswar based orphanage called Adruta Children’s Home, are creating a space of their own in Odissi, a dance form from Orissa.

Purnima, Amrita, Jyotsnarani, Anjali, Spandita and Pranati have been undergoing training in the classical dance form for over a decade at the Rawa Academy, a sister concern of Adruta Children’s Home founded by Aditya Mohanty,  a retired professor of Philosophy. All the girls, who are in the age group of 14 to 25, were toddlers when they were either abandoned or lost their parents.

Rescued by Mohanty, these inmates of the Adruta Children’s Home, are now being trained in Odissi, under the tutelage of choreographer Bharat Charan Giri, and dancer Sagarika Mishra, who is also the superintendent of the children’s home, in the Guru Deba Prasad Das gharana for Odissi.

Apart from performing at New Delhi, Kolkata, Odisha, Mumbai and  Andhra Pradesh, the girls have already showcased their talent in New York, Malaysia and Singapore representing the Adruta Dance Troupe in the last five years.

Their special repertoires like ‘Dasaavatar’ and ‘Krishna Leela’, have been lauded by audiences in prestigious dance festivals including the Mukteswar Dance Festival in Bhubaneswar.

Besides dancing, the girls are pursuing their education in local schools and colleges. The eldest among them, 25-year-old Purnima, teaches Odissi at a private school.

They have obtained ‘Madhyama Purna’ (middle level) in Odissi dance from Akhila Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal, Mumbai and are also adept in folk dance forms like Danda Nacha, Sambalpuri of Odisha and West Bengal’s Jhumur and Baul.

Secretary of the Children’s Home, Supriti Mohanty says, ” At the Rawa Academy, the focus has always been on recognizing and nurturing the hidden talent of the orphaned children. Watching television, these girls had shown interest towards learning Odissi from a very young age. They had started learning at the age of four and today, they are performing across the country as a professional dance troupe.”

The girls say they want to grow up to be professional Odissi dancers and at a later stage of life, research on Odissi dance and music, from the Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra Odissi Research Centre at Bhubaneswar.

“Odissi is our first love and we dedicate six to seven hours in a day for practicing the dance form,” says Spandita.

Like these girls, around 100 orphan girls are currently being trained in Odissi at the Rawa Academy. “Adruta Home was started in 1998 when a baby girl was abandoned outside Prof. Mohanty’s door. Today, over 400 children call this center their home and all of them have interest in dance, music or painting.

“Our motive is to nurture the hidden talent in them. Like Anjali, Spandita, Jyotsnarani, Amrita, Pranati and Purnima, who are now the senior dancers of Rawa Academy, they can go on to become confident individuals who can successfully overcome destitution though their talent,” adds Supriti.

“To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own” as Abraham Lincoln wisely said. These girls seem to be the realization of the very same.

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