Odissi: Krishnendu Saha a formidable soloist in ‘Nirmiti’

Krishnendu Saha

On 8 January 2026, at the IIC Winter Festival in Delhi, Odissi soloist Krishnendu Saha performed his production ‘Nirmiti’. He wore a white Odia dhoti with a purple border. ‘Nirmiti’ was all about weaving together tradition and emotion through different themes.

Krishnendu is a disciple of the redoubtable Odissi guru Sharmila Biswas and has gradually established himself as a soloist of repute. He has been performing his own choreographies in recent times, which bear the DNA of intellectual exploration and innovation that marks his guru’s work. He is a Grade B artist of Doordarshan, has performed at many festivals and has won awards.

For ‘Nirmiti’, his first piece was a Ranga Puja inviting the divine to reside within the dancer, titled ‘Abahani’. It involves awakening the kundalini. The music for the piece had been designed by Guru Sharmila Biswas under the guidance of musicians and practising priests of Odisha. 

 

The lyrics were also collections from the traditional artists of rural Odisha and priests. The piece began with the panchbhoota aarti and yagya, followed by Ganesh vandana. 

Krishnendu began squatting on the floor and offering pooja with an extended arm. The Mangalam Stotra was rendered like chants. After depicting the pooja and aarti, he did a perfect leg lift backwards, brought his leg forwards and held it to one side. 

 

He offered flowers, garland, the dhwaja, and summoned agni for yagya. He moved around in broad plie. The deity is called upon to accept the pooja. Lord Vighnanashan or Ganapati is called upon. Krishnendu depicted the offerings. 

 

The aarti was performed to the sound of instruments playing and clapping. He depicted Ganapati’s attributes – the trunk, ekdant, his hand as the abhaya hasta, his gait, ears flapping. A lotus is offered to Ganapati, which he holds in his trunk. Krishnendu danced the entire piece at an unhurried pace. The music composition was by Sangeeta Gosain and the rhythm composition by Bijaya Kumar Barik, with his guru’s choreography. 

The next piece, ‘Maya Manav’, was a tale from the Bichitra Ramayan. The piece had been composed by Biswanath Khuntia. The concept and choreography were by Sharmila Biswas, with music composition by Guru Ramesh Chandra Das and Guru Bijaya Kumar Barik, sung by Padma Shri Shyamamani Pattanaik.

 

It has a description of Rama as he runs after the illusive golden deer. The music was a little different, folksy. The tale is of the Treta Yug, when Vishnu took the avatar of Rama on earth. 

Krishnendu depicted Rama shooting arrows, an orange cloth on the stage wrapped around his feet. Krishnendu danced with the cloth dragging from his feet and then picked it up and threw it in front of the stage, perhaps symbolizing the restrictions of the sanyasa dharma that he was following. 

 

Then he depicted the golden deer with very stylized moves – dragging his feet, leaping, forward and backward kicks. 

In the popular version of the tale, it is Sita who is enamoured by the golden deer and persuades Rama to go and get the deer to her. Here, Rama himself was attracted to the deer by the entrapments of maya and impelled to go and catch the deer. He tries to feed it fruits when it slips away. The deer escapes into a mrigtrishna, where the illusion makes everything appear close at hand. 

 

Maya is at play. The dear playfully comes close and escapes from above Rama’s shoulder. Krishnendu took a leap and a split to show the escape. As Rama shoots arrows, the dear evades them. Rama runs after it, calling it dusht. Rama is finally tired and confused, with the music changing to show the defeat. 

 

There were transparent cloth pieces lying on the stage. He picked two from two corners and wrapped them around a third piece from another corner, the size increasing as the hold of maya increases. The last and the biggest piece he draped over his head.

 

That was the last posture, showing Vishnu in the spell of maya – all of creation, including the gods, are in the grip of maya. It was a poignant and thought-provoking depiction. 

 

Rama in the Ramakatha does not glorify himself as god. Instead, he is known as the maryada purushottam, who treaded the path of maryada and does what man can do to the best of his ability. It was indeed a very intriguing piece which challenged your belief system. 

The next piece was laden with bhakti, a composition of Kannada poet Vyasatirtha, music by Samarth Jhanve. The bhakta performs the daily sewa while asking the lord to come to him. In a deep, meditative state, he goes into a trance and realizes that Krishna is standing at his doorstep. He showers his lord with sewa. Though he finally wakes up and realizes that it was a trance and he is only sitting next to his deity in the mandir, there are tell-tale signs. This piece was choreographed by Krishnendu himself.

The bhakta is immersed in his nitya sewa, seated in front of the lord and offering flowers and a garland. He is beseeching his lord to come and speak to him, and then he sees that the lord is standing on his doorstep in all his finery, complete with mukut and murli. It was a bhava-laden moment. The bhakta ushers him inside and seats him, wipes the sweat from his forehead and offers pankha. He gets bhog to feed the lord, who then forces him to partake of the bhog. Krishnendu’s eyes sparkled with the emotions of the moment when the bhakta sees the teen lok in the lord’s mouth. He makes chandan and applies it to the lord. 

 

At this point, the bhakta wakes from his trance and realizes it was not real. It is only when he touches his cheek and finds that it is smeared with chandan that he realizes that the lines between real and unreal are very thin. Krishnendu’s rendition was poignant and the sentiments felt real. 

The final piece was Jayadeva’s ‘Dashavatar’. Krishnendu’s stylized rendition of this common depiction is unique, and so is the thought process behind it. He chose to associate this with the theory of evolution as devised by Darwin and western scientists, linking it with the avatars in Hindu mythology. According to the 6th century purana Srishtitatwa, the knowledge of creation, there have been 10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu. Amid the rousing soundscape of chants and bells, Krishnendu depicted the avatars through hastas. 

 

The Meena avatar in water was to protect the species from destruction. The amphibious avatar of Kachhap or Kurma he showed in broad plie, the turtle bearing a chakra on his back and carrying the Mandar parvat on his back for samudra manthan. 

 

 

Coming to mammals, Krishnendu depicted the Varaha avatar through stances, the half-man and half-animal avatar of Narasimha through broad plie and hands moving as claws, the short man, the Vamana avatar, through a gait with short steps, support by an umbrella. 

 

The warrior avatar, Parashuram, was shown moving with his sword. Man was depicted as the king in Rama avatar with the bow and arrow stance. He vanquished dashamukha Ravana and Bali. Man as the cultivator was depicted through Balaram. He sows seeds and drags his hal, as the Haldhar. 

 

 

The Budhha symbolizes ahimsa and intellectual growth. Finally, the Kalki avatar was shown riding a horse, leaping and galloping. Due to human greed, there is extensive destruction of nature. 

 

To the rousing music of conches and bells, Krishnendu lay on his stomach, hands and feet flailing, pressing down with his hands, showing the destruction of nature in earth, water, fire, air and sky – everything is destroyed by this evolved man. 

 

And then there was an extension of the tale when creation appears again as a lotus bud on the pond and a bee hovering over it as maya weaves its cycle over and over again. The choreography for this was by Guru Sharmila Biswas, music composition and vocals by Srijan Chatterjee, rhythm composition by Guru Sharmila Biswas and Ajay Chowdhury.

Pics: Anoop Arora