The California Institute of Technology researcher studied odissi dance in her native India for 20 years and teaches the rare dance form. She, along with five other dancers, will bring that talent to the Ramo Auditorium stage for "An Evening of Odissi" at 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 23. The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required.
The Caltech Y, Asian Pacific Student Union, the Diversity Program Fund, Student Affairs, the Women's Center, and International Student Programs are sponsoring the event as the concluding activity of Asia-Pacific Heritage Week at Caltech.
Datta, who earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from Caltech last year, was one of the top odissi performers in India, she even received a scholarship from the Indian government to study dance in college. Odissi, which has the same stature as ballet in the United States, was not her only love, however.
Her love of science drew her to the U.S. and has monopolized her time for the past few years.
"If you're going to do something well, you have to put in the effort," says Datta, who used to spend seven hours a day practicing dance, but now that time is devoted to science.
She studies the computational methods in enzyme design and plans to work in biotechnology, but dance will never be far from her life.
"Dancing is so much in me that it has to continue. I've groomed it for so many years that I can't stop," she said.
Ironically, it's a bit of an accident that she became an odissi dancer to begin with. She was originally signed up for a more common traditional Indian dance, bharatnatyam, when she was six years old. That style required stiff and angular movements. Her teacher recommended to her mother that she try odissi, a smoother, flowing form of dance that better fit her personality.
"Indian classical dances are dances of the mind and the soul and are extremely traditional. They still follow the rules set down in texts of the second century A.D. Indian classical dance is created through rhythmic movements and is very sensuous but the blissful experience it evokes is very spiritual," according to Datta.
The ancient classical dance originated in the eastern coastal state of Orissa, India. Unlike the other Indian classical dances, such as bharatnatyam and kathak that have gained visibility in the U.S., an odissi performance is relatively infrequent, especially in Southern California, she added.
Possibly the oldest classical dance in the country, odissi has been mentioned in inscriptions and depicted in sculptures in temples. The dance form lost its patronage and became almost extinct during the colonial period. In the 1950s, with the rise of nationalism, the dance form was revitalized through a study of the literature on the subject and the sculpted dance poses. Of all the primary classical dances of India, this predominantly feminine dance most closely incorporates stances from temple carvings, she explained.
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