Effortlessly inhabiting the tumultuous episode of Sitaharan from the Ramayana at the Kalpodip Utsav at G.D. Birla Sabhagar recently, the Odissi dancer, Bijayini Satpathy (picture), dazzled as she moved from one character to another. Her transformations from the noble Rama to the wily Ravana, the artless Sita to the devoted Jatayu, harnessed extraordinary ease and power. It would be hard to forget Satpathy’s representation of the golden deer. The exquisitely etched classicism of her movements modulated into an idiom of quicksilver flight and graceful lightness as her deer darted airily across the stage to escape capture. The dance piece, originally created by Kelucharan Mohapatra, is less mannered and more realistic in Satpathy’s re-imagination of it. She is completely natural in her guileless storytelling and stunning imagery, whisking you off to the forests of Dandakaranya and holding you in her thrall.

A luminously virtuosic dancer, she began her performance with a piece titled Call of Dawn. Materialising awe-inspiringly from within a cloud of smoke, embodying the half-male half-female form of Ardhanarishwar, she created an exhilarating moment of gooseflesh epiphany. In another of her offerings, Nazrul Islam’s song, “Arunakanti ke go jogi bhikhari”, set to Raga Ahir Bhairo, Satpathy played a young woman who chooses Krishna over Shiva as her companion on account of the former’s easy accessibility. Her athletic elegance combined with brilliant, sinuous dancing never allowed her to lose sight of the drama in her story, her energetic retelling of which pulsated with life and richly imagined details.

Earlier in the evening, the Bharatanatyam exponent, Rama Vaidyanathan, presented Saamya, a choreographic piece that is centred around the season of spring imagined as a moment of poise and a period characterised by the intensity of love and longing. Her rich and detailed performance — based on a text culled from Vedas and Puranas — with her usual panache, was as always a pleasure to watch and engage with. The two sensational dancers made it a very special evening, which also featured a performance by Pompi Paul and her students of Kalpodip.