Bijayini Satpathy World Premiere: ABHIPSAA — a seeking

“For four decades,” Odissi dance master Bijayini Satpathy writes, “the Odissi I have known and owned has been someone else’s song, someone else’s making, someone else’s idea, someone else’s feelings and emotions.” Hailed by The New Yorker as “a performer of exquisite grace and technique,” Satpathy spent 25 years as Principal Dancer with India’s famed Nrityagram Dance Ensemble before striking out on her own to create this singular solo work that radically integrates Odissi’s pasts and proposes its possible futures.

This December, Durham audiences will be the first to see the result: ABHIPSAA — a seeking, co-commissioned by Duke Performances and New York’s Baryshnikov Arts Center. Satpathy boldly explores her solo voice, advancing the vocabulary of Indian classical dance; ABHIPSAA — a seeking pairs Satpathy’s mesmerizing and rigorous choreography with a new musical score.

“Watching her, one feels that the language of odissi is deeply alive, urgent, and universal, like all great art-forms.” —Dance Tabs