In Memory of Guru Surendra Nath Jena

"I was a student of Guru Surendranath Jena at Triveni Sangam for a very brief period more than 2 decades back.....I used to admire the uniqueness of his work. He used to tell me that this new style is my "Guru Dakshina" to my Guru. I could feel his passion for his work....."

- Mrinalini Padhi Jul 12, 2006

"...Poignant and demanding art form, which, as you know, he developed through sheer determination..."

-Nirmal Jena & Chitrita Mukerjee Apr 21, 2007

[The following has been borrowed from Dr. Alessandra Lopez y Royo's extremely informative and interesting website. Please visit for more information.]

Guru Surendranath Jena, a "lesser known master", choreographed since the 1950s, but his work was been preserved and passed on solely through embodied memory. ‘Surababu’ moved to Delhi in the 1960s and began to teach at Triveni Kala Sangam. He evolved his own style of Odissi, reconstructing it from his interpretation of the dance sculptures of the Konarak temple, which provided him with a dance vocabulary in stone and which he imaginatively exploited to fashion his new dance. His Odissi was based on the iconography of the nata mandapa (dance hall) of the Konarak temple, with the dance poses from the temple reinterpreted by him as dance movement units, turning the iconographic narratives into dances. He made a true effort to understand the dynamics of the dance/sculpture interface in the context of Indian dance performance and created choreographies on that basis.

He also challenged notions of femininity in Odissi dance and created compositions which explored the raudra (anger) and bhibatsa (disgust) sentiments, usually regarded as un-feminine and thus not suited to the neo-classicism of the dance: for this reason alone, his Odissi is regarded as somewhat 'transgressive'. In addition, he favored the solo performance, for its narrative and dramatic content rather than dance-drama style acting.

How was Guru Surendranath’s Odissi different?

In addition to the more usual tribhangi and chauka exercises, Guru Surendranath Jena devised 24 dance units which were unique to his style. Based on both tribhangi and chauka, they were flowing movements out of which whole dance phrases have been created.

Surababu’s divergence from other odissi styles and schools was significant. The main difference arose from his particular work in converting the sculpture poses into codified movement units and vocabulary.

Typically, the iconic poses of the Orissan temple sculptures in Odissi styles are linked together through the footwork and gestural language devised by the Jayantika group for the dance, whereby the poses become ‘highlights’ of a dance sequence. In Guru Surendranath’s style, the poses themselves are dynamically stretched and energised, deriving a complex movement unit from the manipulation of the initial static pose. He achieves this by reimagining the ‘missing portions’ of the movements frozen in the sculptures of the Konarak nata mandapa. In his odissi, the basic movement vocabulary is provided by 24 dance movement units, all originating from the Konarak temple.

These units can be further divided into sub-units involving movements of the upper part of the body and movements of the lower part of the body. This process of segmentation and re-assemblage can be more easily visualized if one imagines a horizontal axis along the circumference of the waist cutting the body into a top and a bottom half, and intersecting with a vertical axis which coincides with the straight spine and divides the body into a left and a right half. This imaginary partitioning of the body provides a three-dimensional geometric structure and a planar grid for the projection and extension of each sculpture and its movement.

A videoclip of Pratibha Jena Singh's students (Jaya Chattopadhyay, Timsi Bagaria, Aastha Gandhi) below at Triveni Kala Sangam, in New Delhi demonstrates a few of these unique units:

Guru Surendranath named his movement units borrowing the nomenclature from the silpa sastra (treatises dealing with sculpture and architecture) rather than the dance/drama treatises. Scholar Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, who was for many years one of Guru Jena’s students, and among the first to appreciate his iconographic insights and the plasticity of his movements , discussed his work in terms of karana units. Each unit devised by Guru Surendranath was a karana, but not in the sense of being a reconstruction of any one of the 108 karanas listed in the Natyasastra and seen in the reliefs of, for example, the Southern Indian Chidambaram temple. The karanas of Guru Surendranath are conceptual, in keeping with the definition of karana given in the sastras – a movement of the upper body, a movement of the lower body and a stance – but materially new.
The conceptualisation of dance units based on the Konarak sculptures was not the only distinctive feature of Guru Surendranath Jena’s Odissi. Because of the iconicity he visualised for the dance, his basic tribhangi and basic chauka, involved deeper bends styles. The chauka in particular is performed through a slow lowering movement from middle to low level, down to a squatting position and rising again to mid-level. This is done while retaining the equidistant sideways position of the bent legs, in order to form a square – a chauka – and involving simultaneous side shifts of the torso. His tribhangi was again based on a clear shift of the torso from the central vertical axis, in a way other styles of odissi would regard as exaggerated. Another important feature is the raising and lowering of the body while dancing, creating an undulating effect through a continuous change of level.

And an arasa, a small dance section being taught by Pratibha;

For more information regaring Guru Surendra Nath Jena's legacy, please obtain a copy of Dr. Alessandra Lopez y Royo's DVD on the Guru Surendra Nath Jena , through SOAS bookshop and/or contact;

Nirmal Jena & Chitrita Mukerjee
Odissi Dance Company
23 Burke Street
Chifley, New South Whales, Australia 2036
Email: odcsydney@yahoo.com.au

The Odissi Dance Company was founded in Sydney in 1992 by Nirmal Jena and Chitrita Mukerjee, recognized experts in the ancient Odissi dance form.

And finally, Surababu's Dashavatar;

Rest in peace Guru Surendranath Jena.
You will be missed.