Should I say something new on world dance day and if new, what should be that! When I was thinking suddenly a poster flashed in my mind. In the year 1966 leading Odia film maker and actor Goura Ghosh make a film “Kaa” based on the novel of Kahnucharan Mohanty. In the film poster late Sanjukta Panigrahi, the legendary Odissi dancer was the prime attraction. In sixties a couple of films came up portraying Minati Mishra as the lead and there were significant dance numbers in those films like “Arundhati” and “Sadhana”. In 1969 “Srikrushna Rasaleela” which was produced by veteran play writes and theatre personality late Kamal Lochan Mohanty( father of Odissi danseuse Aruna Mohanty) and choreography design by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra came to cinema halls. That was purely a dance drama taking Odissi and Rasa as its major components. Later Banshi Vilash produced another dance based cinema “Basanta Rasa”.
There is a long association of Odissi dancers in Odia films. Sangita Das, another veteran from Deba Prasad style of Odissi did few a good films like “Baje Bainshi Nache Ghungura” “jai Phula’ etc. Sharmila Biswas was the leading lady in “Sri jayadev”(B). Kasturi Patnaik, a promising dancer of 1990s was featured in the lead role of a cinema titled “Radha”.Aruna Mohanty acted in few films as a child artiste. Alok kanungo was there in Mrinal Sen’s award winning “Matira Manisha” as a child artiste. Late Ramani Ranjan Jena was also a part of many dance numbers.
In 90s Odia cinema changed it’s original track and moved towards imitations. We lost the stream of originality and Odianess. After a long gap Akshyaya Parija, veteran film maker and Odissi promoter reintroduced Odissi in odia films through his commercial venture “Thukul” and he hooked in Meera Das to do few choreographic pieces in the cinema. Youngsters like Saswat Joshi are quite active in cinema as choreographers.
The relationship between cinema and classical dance is always peculiar. After few appearances the dancers left movie world and came back to their little stage. In Indian cinema we have superstars and dancers like Baijayantimala Bali and Hema Malini who are equally proficient in dance and acting. In Odisha our dancers took films as a little time experiment only. Minati Mishra in her youth was highly promising and a most sought after film star. She had given half a dozen of super hits in those days and left the movie world to work for dance and dance education.
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Movies and Odissi dance do have a different relationship in pan Indian films also. There are many stars like Minakshi Seshadri, Rani Mukherjee, Shilpa shetty, Isha and Ahana Deol and many more came up as Odissi dancers but there contribution to Odissi remained less significant.
(Photo courtesy -Surya Deo”s collection. This article is not complete rather its part of a long article. So many facts remains outside and needed inclusion in near future)
Prasanta Patnaik