23 July 2023
RENOWNED ARTIST BARNALEE SARKAR – INDIAN CLASSICAL DANCER, CHOREOGRAPHER AND TEACHER
Renowned artist Barnalee Sarkar is an Indian Classical dancer, Choreographer and teacher who has mastered Odissi and Kathak.
Smt. Barnalee Sarkar has been a practitioner of the Indian classical dances for over 40 years. Having trained in two styles; Odissi and Kathak, she has had the fortune of being guided and trained by an excellent lineage of Masters in the respective art forms.
Beginning with movement training under Shri Nikhil Pal, Barnalee began training Odissi under the tutelage of Shri Bijoy Senapati and later under the guidance of Smt. Pratima Gauri at Nrityagram.
Barnalee Sarkar’s Kathak training began in Nrityagram under the supervision of legendary contemporary Kathak dancer, Padmavibhushan Guru Smt. Kumudini Lakhia.
While she has been fortunate to train under various masters of the dance forms, it was the mentoring of eminent dancer Smt. Pratima Gauri, the founder of Nrityagram which was started for preserving the elements of Indian classical dance and who was fondly called ‘Gaurima’ by her disciples, left a very deep impact on Smt. Sarkar.
Barnalee Sarkar founded Shubham, a School of Performing Arts, with the aim of preserving and spreading the rich heritage of our classical art forms.
“Shubham, a School of Performing Arts, Bangalore was founded in 2010 with a handful of students, in a humble space, with the aim of understanding and preserving our rich heritage in classical dances and music.
The mission was to spread our arts among the youth of today and create a space where dance and music could just be a happy experience…..to be able to see the arts as a form of discipline that only evolves one as a better being. Twelve years since the inception, Shubham still continues to grow with the vision and mission; and has creatively bonded more than 450 students across boundaries,” said the renowned artist and Choreographer Barnalee Sarkar.
Artist Barnalee Sarkar has worked and associated with many productions including
RituRanga: the cycle of seasons and their colors, based on Rabindranath Tagore’scompositions in the section ‘Prakriti’ of Geetabitan (2013);
Horikhela: yet another dance drama based on Tagore’s poem Horikhela (theme was the revenge of a Rajput queen whose king was killed by the Mughals (2014);
Namaran: choreographed for a Bengali musical theatre produced by SEPAI, on human desire to live forever, until they want to live no more (2017);
Vivriti: what if the one dream we have sculpted over years comes alive in the form of a human and engrossed our human existence (2019);
Vadya Nrutta: technical piece with a percussion ensemble led by Guru Dhaneshwar Swain and
Pareshti: human life flowing in a course like that of a river…. (2022).
At present, artist Barnali Sarkar is working on a dance drama based on Tagore’s poem, ‘Parishodha‘.
