(From top) Odissi artistes Aruna Mohanty, Debaprasad Das, Sujata Mohapatra and Kelucharan Mohapatra. Telegraph pictures

Bhubaneswar, July 23: The ancient form of Odissi dance was revived to suit the stage about seven decades ago with influences from various performing arts of the state. Disciples of veteran gurus are now following the footsteps of their mentors to imbibe more elements in their latest choreographies to add freshness to Odissi.

The three styles of Odissi that were started by gurus Pankaj Charan Das, Debaprasad Das and Kelucharan Mohapatra respectively, have been propagated by some famous artistes over the years. But the different versions of mythical poems and Odia literature have been staged numerous times already.

“They are probably the best that will ever be created, but Odissi lovers, who come and watch our shows regularly, can guess the next step. And that takes away the interest of the viewer sometimes,” said Gajendra Panda, a well-known dancer and disciple of Debaprasad Das, who is now running his guru’s institute Tridhara.

“Having said that, those compositions are our prized possessions and we will always teach and perform them. But instead of taking direct elements of say ballet or folk dances, that have rightly disturbed classical dance connoisseurs, we have now come together to choose elements from the dozens of dance or performing art forms of the state, that had inspired our gurus. We will then transform the expression or movement into Odissi’s classical grammar and include it in our new productions,” said Panda.

Odissi dancers and musicians sat together last week during a gathering in the city that was hosted to pay tribute to Debaprasad Das on his 28th death anniversary. Each of them put across their suggestion about which arts form offers what elements those are yet to be included in Odissi, albeit in a classical way.

“About 10 years ago, there was a convention of senior dancers when many gurus also were present. The same idea had been discussed but not capitalised upon. In the past few years, we have seen too many moves directly lifted and merged into Odissi that simply steals its originality. Now, we can discuss and approve elements from say Pala where the singer enacts while singing. There are lots of features of Pala that can be blended into Odissi without affecting the originality of either,” said Aruna Mohanty, noted dancer and choreographer.

While many veterans felt that some of the heirs of the most revered dance gurus are spoiling the real form of Odissi by adding either too much novelty of western ballets and broadway or simply presenting poorly trained dancers as top disciples of their father or guru.

Some also criticised the disciples who have completely changed the attire of Odissi and the music and expressions in the name of renovation and experimentation.

“Didn’t the gurus have creativity? Look what they had composed; how beautiful and graceful the movements look on stage. Now they are just insensitively presenting whatever they feel without thinking about what dance form they represent,” said Kumkum Mohanty, veteran danseuse and prominent disciple of Kelucharan Mohapatra.

The artistes have now decided on exploring possibilities from rasa, prahlad nataka, pala, chhau, tribal dances, mahari, kothisala nata, sabdaswara patta, bandhanrutya, gotipua and even tandav.

“It is usually believed that the gurus had transformed styles of devadasi dance mahari and gotipua to create the present form of Odissi. But in reality they had observed plenty of art forms and modified them to suit the Odissi motif. Debaprasad Das in particular added tribal and folk dance elements, but one could never spot them because they were now in a classical mode. That is how it could be done now,” said prominent art historian Dinanath Pathy.