Odissi on Screen: A Meditation on Regional Television

This article aims to interrogate the role of the television screen in creating, re-creating, disseminating, and deconstructing the dancing body. It presents a study of the contemporary landscape of odissi dance, a nationally recognized Indian traditional art form from the eastern Indian state of Odisha, through its on-screen representation. As an odissi soloist, I register, analyze, and interpret screenic data, mainly televised interviews of dancers, live telecasts of dance festivals in Odisha, and performances recorded for the camera in the studios. I focus on content primarily broadcast on the state-owned satellite channel broadcasting in Odia, the official language in Odisha. My position is of a Sahrdaya, an observer tutored in the codes and conventions of the art form and critically responsive to the structure of emotion in the presentation. I locate the dancing body across discursive, disseminative, and choreographic renditions. This subjective positioning, I argue, democratizes the expressive ethos of odissi embodiment. Commenting on the contemporary curation of the dancing body by the state network, this essay brings larger questions around the representation of gender, sexuality, caste, and regionalism on the television screen.