Dear Friends,
The 18th Guru Debaprasad Award celebration held on 26 & 27 Oct, 2024 at Rabindra Mandap, Bhubaneswar, was a significant Odissi annual event in the 2024 cultural calendar of Bhubaneswar.
For its presenter, Tridhara, and founder & artistic director, Guru Gajendra Kumar Panda, the Festival is a significant flagship event for the Debaprasad Parampara.
(The organiser of the Festival, the latter which was supposed to he held for three days on 25, 26 & 27 Oct, was compelled to present it for two days instead of three, as Bhubaneswar had faced a compulsory shutdown due to cyclone Dana that affected Odisha).
Through the high profile of the Award Festival and the efforts of Guru Gajendra Panda, the legacy of the Debaprasad Parampara is able to live on and be sustained. Awards were presented under two categories – the Lifetime Achievement Award for senior artists and the Prativa Award for outstanding junior artists for both Classical music and dance.
For the Dance category, two of the three awardees of The Guru Debaprasad Award, were Malaysians – eminent Bharatanatyam dancer, Guru Ajith Bhaskaran Das (founder of Suvarna Fine Arts, Johor) and the highly talented Sutra principal dancer, Vickeshwaran Gunasegar. The other Prativa awardee, Kathak dancer Smt Rupa Rani Borah, hailed from Guwahati, Assam.
The Dance Lifetime Achievement awardees were Odissi veterans, Guru Mayadhar Raut, Madhavi Mudgal and Chitra Visweswaran (all three are Padma Shri awardees). Madhavi Mudgal and Chitra Visweswaran, both in their 70s, each gave a soulful performance, that touched the heart of audiences.Sutra opened the Festival on the 26 Oct with its much appreciated Odissi production, ‘An Invitation to Odissi’ followed by two solo works by Ajith Bhaskaran Das (Bharatanatyam) and Kathak dancer, Rupa Rani Borah.
Tridhara dancers performed a spectacular production inspired by the Ramayana, the highlight of the last evening as a closure to a Festival, that showcased the best of the Debaprasad Odissi parampara.
Sutra