Odissi

One of India's eight classical dance forms

Puri, Odisha

Odissi is one of India's eight classical dance forms, and it is the oldest. Its origins lie in the temples of Odisha — particularly the Jagannath Temple in Puri and the Sun Temple at Konark — where it was performed by devadasis, women dedicated to the service of the deity. Temple carvings at Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves, dating back over 2,000 years, depict poses that are still performed today.

The dance is built around the tribhanga — a three-point body deflection at the neck, torso, and knees — that gives Odissi its distinctive fluid, sculptural quality. Unlike the more angular Bharatanatyam, Odissi moves like water. It is lyrical, sensuous, and deeply devotional.

During the colonial period, the British banned devadasi practices, and Odissi nearly disappeared. By the mid-20th century, it existed only in fragments — in the memory of a few surviving practitioners, in the carvings on temple walls, and in the gotipua tradition, where young boys dressed as women performed the dance in temple courtyards.

In the 1950s, a group of scholars, dancers, and cultural activists — including Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, Guru Pankaj Charan Das, and Guru Deba Prasad Das — worked to reconstruct and codify Odissi as a classical form. They drew on the temple sculptures, the surviving practitioners, and the gotipua tradition to rebuild what had almost been lost.

Today, Odissi is performed on stages around the world. It has produced legendary dancers — Sanjukta Panigrahi, Sonal Mansingh, Sharon Lowen — who have carried it far beyond Odisha. But its heart remains in the temples where it was born, in the stone carvings that preserved it when everything else was taken away.