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For more than seven centuries European travelers have been fascinated with the female temple dancers of India, and have reported about them in their narratives. But, as far as I know, it was not until the 20th century that Westerners have had an active role in learning, performing and researching the many genres of Indian dance. In the first part of this paper I'll focus on what has become known as Odissi, and how several non-Indians helped to popularize it. In the second part I'll pay attention to the different interpretations of the masters, and the changes I have personally experienced since I began studying Odissi over 30 years ago.
I.
As is well known, present-day Odissi dance is a re-creation or reconstruction for the modern Indian stage after dancing ceased to exist in the temples of Orissa, more specifically, the famous Jagannath temple of Puri. It was in 1957 that we see the inception of the Jayantika, which was the coming together of dance scholars, gurus and performers in the Raghunath Mandir, Cuttack (the former capital city of Orissa), to codify Odissi dance by deciding on a repertoire, and creating a standard for its technique. Members of this alliance drew from what had been performed by the few remaining dancers of the Puri temples, known as maharis (who were marginalized and not a part of this alliance due their low social status), the young male acrobatic dancers dressed as females referred to as gotipua, temple sculptures which helped to set the form, and dance treatises such as the Natyashastra, Abhinaya Darpana, and Abhinaya Chandrika. Gurus and dancers were also employed by the Anapurna Theatre in Cuttack during the 1940s to create dances to be integrated into dramas, and some of these, particularly DasAvatara by Guru Pankaj Charan Das, had an impact on the repertoire as well.
But even before the Jayantika took place, a Jewish refugee from Budapest, the archeologist, dance critic and journalist Dr. Charles Fabri, was promoting the young Odissi dancer Priyambada Mohanty, after seeing her perform at the Inter University Youth Festival, New Delhi, in 1954 where she took third prize. This was the first time Odissi was recognized outside Orissa. Almost two decades earlier, in South India, Rukmini Devi...