Broken and Rebuilt

Bijayini Satpathy and a new understanding of Indian classical dance.

- By Jennifer Homans

Every artist confronts her past, and, in the case of the Indian dancer Bijayini Satpathy, that past is both a country and a colonial legacy. Satpathy performs Odissi, a dance style from the eastern state of Odisha which is one of India’s eight classical dance forms. Although Indian classical dance is commonly assumed to be ancient and reverential—and there is a documented history of devotional dancing extending back more than two millennia—all eight of these designated classical styles are modern, post-colonial inventions.

Even before the British formally departed the country, in 1947, Indian authorities had set out to give their emerging nation its own indigenous theatrical arts, and gurus and dancers from various regions began assembling standardized forms out of a dizzying variety of local practices and traditions. By 1952, four of these freshly codified dance styles—bharatanatyam, kathak, kathakali, and manipuri—had been formally recognized by the government, and given an élite Western stamp, “classical,” a word that, as Anurima Banerji points out in her book “Dancing Odissi,” had no true equivalent in Indian languages until British rule. Exponents of Odissi pushed for inclusion and exhibited the form at a landmark meeting in New Delhi in 1958, with Nehru himself presiding over a celebratory reception. Odissi gained official recognition two years later and has since been joined by other newly defined forms.