Dear Friends,
NIVRITTI (Odissi) by Indu Vijay 6 & 7 September, 2024Sutra House 8pm NIVRITTI (Odissi), ‘A Journey Within’, by Singapore-based dancer Indu Vijay shone with authenticity and integrity last night, at its premiere at Sutra House, Kuala Lumpur.
These qualities, rare in the present fast digital Tik Tok era of instant gratification, were the hallmark of an experienced and matured dancer, who had ‘arrived’. Clearly, Indu Vijay was not preoccupied with the sensational in NIVRITTI.
Indu Vijay performed four works, three of which were created by the distinguished gurus who had influenced her – the late Guru Gangadhar Pradhan, Maestro Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and Guru Aruna Mohanty. In her concluding work Indu Vijay danced her own choreographed work, inspired by Kabir.
According to Indu, it was coincidental that two of the works she performed were by the mystic medieval Muslim poets, Sala Bhega and Kabir. Their timeless universal message was significant and was specially relevant in the present austere Islamic wave of Wahabbist Arabatisation of Malaysian Malays.
Indu explained the motive and process that had led her to creating ‘the journey within’. She had used the metaphor of the body as the moving temple and her discovery that the highest spirit actually resides within oneself!
For the audience made up mostly of dancers from various schools of Kuala Lumpur, this message was succinctly conveyed through both Indu’s sattvika abhinaya and her immaculate ‘angasuddha’.
The journey that originated within eventually manifested outwardly as the dancer performed her exquisite movements. The body, the supreme metaphor of the moving temple radiates with the ‘realised’ spirit within! This is the ‘Yoga’ of dance.
Ramli