Sattriya Dance by Anwesa Mahanta


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Bayanacharya Shri Ghanakanta Bora Muktiyar

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THE JOURNEY TO REACH BEYOND “ A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what is a heaven for?” said Robert Browning. Whether one reaches or experiences heaven is debatable or a subjective question. But the eternal quest of man makes him always to look and reach beyond in the voyage of his life. It is more so in the peregrination of an artist adhering to a ritual form belonging to the sanctum. It is true of Adhyapak Ghanakanta Bora, the celebated Sattriya Dance exponent who taking an expedition from an obscure village in Dakshinpat of Majuli, the river island of the Brahmaputra, always has envisioned beyond the peripheral grounds. Contrary to the time honoured saying that the home is the best seat of learning for a child, child Ghanakanta’s journey started with a dislocation from the familiar surrounding paving owards the making of familiarizing the de-familiar. Lifted from the playful household life at 4, the young child was placed at the monastic order of the Kamalabari Sattra, a prem...
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Sattriya Dance

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Traditional art forms are subject to cycles of growth, decay, renewal and reconstruction, many a time. Indian Dance for centuries survived in the precincts of temples and courts that nurtured the art forms and contributed to its sustenance. However, it suffered a gradual decadence during the colonial period and it was only after the emergence of the Nationalist Movement that there was an upsurge of Indian dance. And the regeneration can undoubtedly be acclaimed as Dance Renaissance that followed during the Post Independence period. Situated in an extreme corner of the country Assam with its Sattriya art however escaped from such amelioration. The lamp lit in the 15th and the 16th centuries leavened through the ages and continue to lit with all its brightness even today. Thus with such a hoary past Sattriya Dance is one of the greatest living traditions of Indian art. The Sattriya Dance, one of the finest forms of Indian dances, emerges from an offshoot of the Neo-Vaisnava movement in ...
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A glance at the weave of a magical wonder

By: Anwesa Mahanta The Bhakti Movement in Assam is a significant episode in the socio-cultural history that opened up wider vistas of human experience and directed ways of translating thoughts and ideas into physical reality. Led by Srimanta Sankaradeva, (1449-1568), saint and preacher, poet and playwright, philosopher and reformer, artist and composer (“all rolled into one” as described by Vasudev Saran Agrawal) the Bhakti Movement in Assam brought a ‘new comprehensive outlook on life, a distinctly healthy tone to social behavior with an all pervasive organizational set up, and accelerated the pace of literature and the fine arts.’ (Maheswar Neog). Most importantly, it broke the straitjacketed version of the philosophical doctrine as a reign specified to crème de la crème and spread the emissions of enlightenment to the general masses which surcharged the popular emotional layers with intense devotion. Whether it is Bhaona, or any other form of fine arts, the intention of general mass...
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