Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
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Cornelia Schnepel
Abstract
This article is based on interviews made with gurus and dancers in Orissa, East India. The Odissi, a “classical” dance which stands at the centre of attention here, is a mixture of centuries-old traditions and relatively new influences, or even “inventions“. By discussing the dance′s history, its aesthetic qualities and, most importantly, the emic points of view of contemporary practitioners of the dance, it is shown that today′s Odissi is based on ideas and practices that stem as much from old Sanskrit writings and late-medieval temple practices as they do from the contemporary realms of popular Hinduism and tribal religion and art. For its practitioners, the dance represents a form of devotion to Jagannath, and Odisssi is thus understood as a “spiritual dance” through which a relationship between the god and his adherents is established or performed. While the attitude exhibited by dancers and audience alike is one of spirituality and bhakti, this spirituality and loving surrender can only be achieved through the bodily practice of the dance, which turns the presence of the deity into a somatic experience in which all the bodily senses are involved.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
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- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
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- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
Articles in the same Issue
- Rethinking the Body: An Introduction
- A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations
- The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India
- God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic
- Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy
- Body, Breath and Representation in Śaiva Tantrism
- Telling Bodies
- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India
- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
