A premier institute for learning Odissi dance in New Delhi; established in 1999 by Anita Babu (alumni of Orissa Dance Academy, Bhubaneswar and senior disciple of Padmashree Guru Gangadhar Pradhan). And Anita is one of them. But at the same time Anita also believes in not running away from other worldy duties. She is a teacher, dancer, housewife, mother, sister, daughter and a daughter-in-law, all rolled into one. And still she manages to do justice to all these roles with aplomb. Considered to be one of the most difficult among all the classical dance forms of India, Anita started to take some baby steps when she was just about 7 years old. Soon she came under the tutelage of one of the then upcoming Gurus – Shree Gangadhar Pradhan. Over the next 10 years she continued to refine her skills under his guidance at his institute called Orissa Dance Academy, Bhubaneswar. At the academy other senior disciples of Guruji like Aruna Mohanty, Nandita Patnaik and Bichitrananda Swain also played a big role further enhancing her dancing skills as well as understanding the finer and deeper meaning of this great dance form. Inspite of a lot of time being dedicated to Odissi, she still completed her Master in Arts degree in Anthropology from Utkal University. Over the years, under the banner of Orissa Dance Academy, Anita gave numerous performances through the length and breadth of India at various festivals and functions, namely the Konark Dance Festival, Puri Beach Festival, Pallavostava, etc. She is also a regular performer on Doordarshan, the national TV network and is also an empanelled artiste in ICCR in the Reference Panel of Artistes. Soon enough the urge to share, spread and popularize this dance form became so powerful that she decided to start an institute in New Delhi, India for imparting training in Odissi. This was in 1998 and Padmashree late Guru Gangadhar Pradhan advised Anita that the institute be named “Odissi Natya Sala” which today has over 40 students ranging from the age of 6 to 40. In this period she had innumerable opportunities to showcase Odissi all over the country and abroad as well. She was empanelled in ICCR as well and toured US of A as an ICCR sponsored artiste in 2003. During the last 10 years she also turned into an enthusiastic organizer of dance and culture festivals and worked closely with Orissa Dance Academy and Rudraksh Foundation. One of her recent initiatives has been to give a platform to upcoming dancers from Orissa a chance to perform in front of an appreciative audience in Delhi. The first in this series was a 2 day festival titled “Purusha Suktam” held in May 2010 in Delhi. With the blessings of Lord Jagannath, her Guru, well wishers, patrons and sponsors Anita is determined to scale greater heights as a dancer and also make Odissi Natya Sala a premier institute for learning Odissi dance in India.
