A MORE PERFECT UNION
Surupa Sen and Biyajini Satpathy, principal dancers from the troupe Nrityagam, performed at the Temple of Dendur at the Met last Saturday at dusk. It was a romantic setting for a romantic dance form, Odissi. All five short pieces they performed showcased its signature baroque postures, that bend the body into dramatic, shifting “S” curves that ripple from the face through the torso to the fingers and feet. In the first dances the two women performed standing side by side, about six feet part, in unison but independently. They were majestic but formal.
The three other dances, when the dancers performed as characters who danced “at” one another, were electrifying, charged physically and mythologically. In the first of these they depicted male and female lovers who came together playfully, broke apart agonizingly, and then fell together again, finally, gingerly. The extraordinary final dance described a divided male-female spirit, with Surupa acting the masculine principle and Satpathy the feminine. Sometimes one woman danced standing close behind the other, spinning limbs in mirrored formation. Sometimes one woman squatted and turned to the side while the other hovered above her, balanced on one foot, turned in the opposite direction. Finally, standing side by side, elbows and knees bent, the two shuffled off the stage like a single eight-limbed two-faced creature.
At these moments the dancers seemed blissfully conjoined. Yet they performed throughout without touching; while twisted together they mantained a long, fingers-wide sliver of space between them. More than the Temple or the costumes, this was the afternoon’s outstanding spectacle: two bodies moving in passionate duet.