Priyamvada Roy with her students. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, Sept. 5: Dance is a way of worshipping god.

Odissi danseuse Priyamvada Roy wants to teach her students how to reach god through dance at the four-day workshop at Gurukul (a wing of Bharatiya Yugavashistha Brahmananda Sangha)

A student of eminent dancer late Sanjukta Panigrahi, Priyamvada is teaching students basic sitting postures, the mudras, the forms and hand movements at the workshop.

For Roy, dance is a way of expressing one’s emotion. “I feel god’s presence when I dance. This is what I want to share with my students here. They should also know the importance of dance and the importance of being born as an Indian. It is sad that children forget to appreciate it,” said Priyamvada.

The workshop started on September 3 and would conclude tomorrow but Priyamvada will be visiting the steel city every month.

According to her, the six-year course cannot be completed in a four-day workshop. So, she will be coming down every month to teach students the nuances of the dance form.

“Students come in the morning and stay till night. They understand that if you are determined to learn something, time does not matter,” said Priyamvada. Odissi, like any other classical dance, is not easy. I do not practise keeping the time in my mind. It is not possible to teach so much in four days so I have thought of coming down to the steel city every month. Students have come here to learn and I have to do justice to them,” she said.