IT promises to be a feast for the senses. The Vrindaban Academy of Classical Music and Dance, and Gallery 7 in Central are dishing up a fine and varied menu of Indian arts to celebrate the academy's third anniversary in the territory.
The four-day festival of Indian classical music, dance and painting kicks off on October 11 at the Cultural Centre Studio Theatre with a haunting duet by bamboo flautist Pundit Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pundit Jasraj singing Hindustani vocals.
Both have performed in Hong Kong before and return by popular demand. But the piece de resistance will be the odissi dance recital on October 13 by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, known as the father of classical odissi.
Odissi, the traditional temple dance from the southern Indian state of Orissa, is akin to the better known bharata natyam of Tamil Nadu.
While the state of Tamil Nadu was too far south for the conquering Moghuls, ensuring the survival of the bharata natyam through the centuries, Orissa was ravaged.
Dancers were persecuted and often tortured by the invaders, ensuring that odissi was all but wiped out as a temple dance, surviving only in some villages in Orissa as a lesser form known as gotipua performed by small boys.
Guru Mahapatra, who learned gotipua as a child, is credited with the revival of classical orissi in the 1960s, codifying the whole form through intensive research into old paintings and sculptures.