Dance Style
Sanjukta Panigrahi spent some time at the International School of Theatre Anthropology at Bologna, Italy in 1986, 1990 and 1992, teaching short courses and demonstrating Odissi dance to foreign students, further adding to its global popularity.
Sanjukta's forte was her Nritta, or pure dance, in which she was outstanding. Her great advantage was her musician husband, whose constant presence helped her finesse her abilities in this genre. In Abhinaya (interpretation of poetry), connoisseurs and critics were agreed on the fact that she more often than not veered towards jatra and melodrama.
Together with her musician husband, Sanjukta has left behind, a rich repertoire of Odissi dance, both modern as well as classical, ranging from traditional numbers based on the Jayadeva's Gita Govinda to the padabalies of Surdas, Chaupais from the Ramacharitamanasa of Tulasidas and the songs of Vidyapati and Rabindranath Tagore, with piece-de-resistance being, the innovative Yugma-Dwandwa: a sort of Jugalbandi between the dancer and the musician in Raga Bageshwari, composed by Pandit Damodar Hota, of Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya, and a disciple of Pandit Omkar Nath Thakur, and the sublime, Moksha Mangalam which in time had become her personal signature, which she used to end her performances, on an ethereal note.
In the words of noted dance critic, Dr. Sunil Kothari, "Sanjukta gave up Bharatnatyam and devoted her life to Odissi, putting her signature on the form."
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