Odissi Dance to get Republic Day stage in Delhi

Insight Bureau:  It’s a piece of good news for people of Odisha. Odissi dance will be performed for the first time at the Republic Day parade on Rajpath in New Delhi.

Selected in the grand final of the ‘Bande Maa Taram Dance Dance Festival’ organized by the Union Ministry of Culture at the all-India level, 480 artists have arrived in Delhi. The selected artists will perform classical dance, folk dance and fusion dance.

Out of the 7 classical dances, 10 artists have been selected for Odissi dance from Anugul’s ‘Nritya Nilaya’ Odissi Dance and Music Institute.

Directed by Guru Swapnarani Sinha and choreographed, these artists will perform Odissi dances on the Delhi highway.

Similarly, 10 Odissi dancers from Delhi’s Sanchari Foundation have been selected by the Sangeet Natak Akademi for Odissi performances on Rajpath.

Artists from ‘Sanchari Foundation’ and ‘Nrityanjali Creation’ have been taught dance under the direct supervision of eminent Odissi dancer Kavita Dwivedi.

Renowned Kathak dancer Rani Khanam is training eight classical dancers. These eight classical dance artists will perform a group dance on January 26 on the theme of “Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat”.

This will be for the first time this year that a painting exhibition will be displayed on Republic Day. Organized by the National Modern Art Gallery, the two-kilometer-long exhibition will feature art on the Delhi highway. More than 100 tribal painters and traditional artists from Odisha have painted these paintings.