Basic Information:
Kirtan: Smt. Seema Acharya Chaudhury
Khol: Sri Harekrishna Halder
Pakhawaj: Sri Uttam Mondal
Dancers: Debamitra Sengupta as Krishna, Archita Chakraborty as Radha, Ambika Roy, Trisha Chakraborty, Bhamoti Basu, Aditi Bose, Prateeti Mukhopadhyay, Rohini Sen Yadav
Direction and Choreography: Smt. Debamitra Sengupta
Description:
Odissi Dance Drama : ‘Raas Leela’ (Based on Padabali Kirtan)
By Debamitra Sengupta & her team
Uniqueness of this dance ballet is exquisite and innovative composition of Odissi dance on the dying art form of Bengal - Padabali Kirtan.
Based on Padabali Kirtan showing the joyous mood where the Gopinis dance with Krishna in a moonlit night of autumn beside the river Yamuna. In a traditional Kirtan style the dance drama begins with ‘Gourchandrika’, an invocation to Sri Chaitanya dev and ends with ‘Maatan’ where all the ‘bhaktas’ enter the stage in a Sankirtan style with Khol, mandira and flowers. ‘Sringar rasa’, the love for Krishna melts into devotion between man and the almighty.
Raas Lila is one of the many song-sequences that make up the corpus of Padabali Kirtan. Its songs depict the manner in which Krishna & Radha celebrate a festival of dance along with a bevy of gopis on a full-moon night in the month of Kartick.
Kirtan is an art form that Bengalis can claim as their own. Debamitra’s mission is to try & revive the popularity of Kirtan and at the same time, to focus on it the attention of the people of light and leading. In her dance drama on Raas Lila she has used a few forgotten talas of the olden days. In her research into the talas of Kirtan she has received valuable guidance from Sri Brajarakhal Das, an eminent Khol player. In the music of Raas Lila Debamitra has used not only the Khol but the Pakhawaj as well. The two instruments have at time been played together in the manner of a duet to create the verisimilitude of a conversation between a man & a woman. The deep and rumbling notes of the Pakhawaj are meant to represent the voice of a man, while the sweet and soft notes of the Khol are intended to represent the voice of a woman.