page_title: Nrityagram
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Nrityagram / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Classical Dancers at Nrityagram, a dance village, near Bangalore. മലയാളം: ഓഡീസ്സി പരിശീലനത്തിനിടയിൽ നിന്ന്. తెలుగు: ఒడిస్సీ నృత్య కళాకారులు.
context_page_description: Nrityagram is India's first modern Gurukul for Indian classical dances and an intentional community in the form of a dance village, set up by Odissi dancer Protima Gauri in 1990. The residential school offers training in Indian classical dance forms, Odissi, Mohiniattam, Kathak, Bharatnatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Manipuri, eight hours a day, six days a week for seven years, following the ancient Guru-shishya tradition. Designed by famous Indian architect Gerard da Cunha, the community is situated near Hesaraghatta Lake 30 km from Bengaluru. Today the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble has performed across India and in many countries abroad.
context_section_description: The word Nrityagram, literally translated, means "dance village," and in founder, Protima Gauri's own words,
  "It is a community of dancers in a forsaken place amidst nature. A place where nothing exists, except dance. A place where you breathe, eat, sleep, dream, talk, imagine - dance. A place where all the five senses can be refined to perfection. A place where dancers drop negative qualities such as jealousy, small-mindedness, greed and malice to embrace their colleagues as sisters and support each other in their journey towards becoming dancers of merit."
  Protima left Mumbai in 1989 to start the dance village, the land was given on lease by state government and by 1990 the institution had taken root, inaugurated on 11 May 1990, by the then Prime Minister, V.P. Singh. Being designed by the well- reputed Indian architect Gerard da Cunha, the building started coming up soon after, following the vernacular architecture of the region. The Nrityagram Dance Ensemble made its New York debut in 1996 and received rave reviews.
  Lynne Fernandez a Delhi-based theatre actress and light designer, first came to Nrityagram in December 1995 to coordinate Surupa Sen's debut and the Nrityagram ensemble's trip abroad and after Protima suffered a mild heart attack, Lynn became actively involved managing the institution, as Protima gradually withdrew. Eventually Protima formally handed over Nrityagram to Lynne Fernandez on 10 July 1997, who became the Managing Trustee of the institution. Subsequently, in August, Protima Gauri set off on her pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar and it was there that she died in the Malpa landslide, near Pithoragarh on the night of 18 August 1997. Since then, Nrityagram has grown in its stature by leaps and bounds and is known today for some of the best ensemble work in. Perfection in dance along with a high level of good technical support, leading to a complete presentation, is its trademark. Even today, gurus and students work in the fields within the Nrityagram, which has 10 acres of land, and grow their own food. Over the years, only Odissi gurukul has been functional due to paucity of funds.
  Surupa Sen who first came as a student, debuted in 1995, later became artistic director of Nrityagram in 1997, and remains to date.  Orissa Dance Academy (ODA) student Bijayini Satpathy who was first student of Nrityagram, is now in charge of the Odissi gurukul.  Some of Nrityagram's few but meritorious students include, Pavithra Reddy, who has had her solo debut in 2003 and who will be hopefully seen in some solo pieces on a wider platform very soon. She has spent almost 12 years as a residential student at Nrityagram, and has learnt under the tutelage of Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy. Ayona Bhaduri and Priyambada Patnaik are also students at this gurukul. They both joined Nrityagram in 1998 and have been a part of the ensemble since 2001.
  Vasanta Habba, a cultural event organised by Nrityagram is known as the classical Woodstock of India, first started in 1994 by Protima, held on first Saturday of February every year, and soon it became the famous annual night-long festival of arts that had 40,000 visitors when it was last held in 2004. When the 2004 tsunami struck, the subsequent 2005 event was cancelled, and community hasn't been able to regroup since, though it hopes to restart it in 2011.
  A 30-minute documentary on the dance village, Nrityagram: For the Love of Dance, directed and produced by Nan Melville was premiered at the annual Dance on Camera Festival, in New York City on 25 January 2010 to which dance critic Alastair Macaulay of the New York Times responded, .."much of the dance footage, not least during the closing credits, is spellbinding. I wanted the film to be twice as long."
caption: Classical Dancers at Nrityagram.
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