Traditional Dance from Orissa, a photo from Orissa, East

Photographer's Note

India is a vast country. Each state is different on her own, beautiful in her own unique way. There are different kinds of dance forms that have originated in different parts of India. There are folk dances, and the traditional forms of dance. All these forms of dance essentially involve the graceful movement of hands and feet according to a particular rhythm, known as "taal" when music is played. Facial expressions, known as "bhavam" are more pronounced in the case of the traditional forms of dance.
"Chhou" is a particular tribal dance that I watched in my trip to Bhubaneswar just a few days back. Originally it is from Bengal tribes. The Chhou is unique form of masked dance. Though it can be seen here that no mask is used here. The dancer impersonates a god, animal, bird, hunter, flower etc. He/she acts out a short theme and performs a series of short themes mailny during the month of Chaitra ( April). Chhou masks have predominantly human features slightly modified to suggest what they are portraying. The performer's face being expressionless, the dancer's body communicates the total emotional and psychological tensions of a character. His/her feet have a gesture language, his/her toes are agile, functional, and expressive, like those of animal. The dancer is mute, no song is sung. Only, instrumental music ( bamboo flute, drums ) accompany him. The dance is very vigorus and acrobatic.

This was handheld picture and no tripd was used. Sharpened a bit using picasa.

arjun_das, ALIRIZA, sufi, sabyasachi1212, taypejka, prezntime, thaprem, Flavia, thawaitrajkumar has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

arjun_das (1851) 2006-09-26 7:47

hi sayan da,

excellent portrait of this chhou dancer. dark background really enhancing the pic very much. also she got excellent expression on her face. is it a scanned image? tfs.

regards,
arjun

clnaef (6289) 2006-09-26 7:55 [Comment]

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ALIRIZA (16423) 2006-09-26 10:07

Hi Sayan,
Beautiful shot, good portrait, like a painting. Colors, composition, sharpness, contrast and background are excellent. Congratulations!
Best wishes my friend...
Ali Rıza

sufi (9588) 2006-09-26 12:58

Merhaba Sayan, my friend...
It's a wonderful and very artisitic portrait photograph my friend... The black background, the red tones and the contrast between the black and red are perfect... Also perfect timing, details and moment...
TFS...
Stay well..
Salim.

sabyasachi1212 (19779) 2006-09-26 14:18

Hi Sayan,
Dance performances on stage are not the easiest to capture as motion blurs and noise asscociated with it are always an issue. But once you overlook those, this being a hand held shot, the dancer's look, her strange expression is well worth capturing. Your notes are increasingly becoming class acts.
Best Wishes
Sabyasachi

taypejka (1689) 2006-09-27 10:11

Hello Sayan,
Beautiful portrait in warm colours and thanks for your note.
best regards
emilia

prezntime (3946) 2006-09-29 10:35

Greetings Sayan.
What a wonderful light in this shot. The red glow highlighting the mysterious atmosphere. THe expression is pronounced but still very beautiful. THe dark background helps bring out the subtle colors you have captured. Even with the motion blur (which I think adds to the photo, being that if a dancer) the face is nice and sharp and very expressive.
Well done friend,
Chris.

thaprem (2566) 2006-10-03 4:33

sayan,
The lady is well placed with her endowed smile & beautiful face popping up all over the farme..The offcentred placing with teh Warm colouring is fanatstic. A enormous effort considering the fact that it was done hand held.
Cheers,
Prem.

Angshu (56760) 2006-11-13 1:20

Dear Sayan
The poise of the dancer is excellent with the small amount of motion blur..it's not easy to capture dance performances, but you've done well here...I think you've oversaturated a bit, especially on the face...I maybe wrong though. But for a hand held shot in low light, I applaud your effort on this one
Regards
Angshuman