Profile - Parwati Dutta: Following the heart - Padma Jayaraj

I saw her amidst dance students assembled for a workshop on Kathak, sponsored by the Sangeet Nataka Akademi, Kerala, in Thrissur. She was distinguishing different dance forms by showing just the neck movements, in Bharatanatyam, Mohiniattam, Kathak, Kuchipudi and Odissi as a unit of gestural vocabulary.

“Dance is visual poetry,” she painted with her hands in the air, colored with the emotions on her face. Her knowledge of the aesthetics of the wide variety of dance forms found in India was impressive. Parwati Dutta introduced herself to the students as the daughter of a Punjabi mother and Bengali father, who was fortunate enough to spend her childhood in a neighborhood in Kolkata and then in Bhopal where many south Indians lived. Her exposure to a multicultural life, of colorful festivities in an impressionable period must have shaped her formative years.

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