Bijayini Satpathy on strength, stillness, and the power of an evolving body

“Dance doesn’t stop just because the body changes. It evolves with you, and you evolve with it,” Bijayini Satpathy tells me as I listen to her intently. But the line lands harder than I expected. As someone who trained in Odissi for eight years, I am aware how central the body is to the dance—the stamina it demands, the grace it expects, and the discipline it builds. But I have never really paused to think about how the body changes after those early years of training end. Or what it means to return to that knowledge, to stay with the form, even as the body evolves.

It was during the Covid lockdown in 2020 when I first came across one of Satpathy’s dance videos on Instagram. Her practice felt less like a performance and more raw, immediate, and unembellished. No stage lights, no elaborate aharya (costume, make-up), just control, breath, and absolute presence. I could see the hours of conditioning in every movement. The way she lunged, held, shifted weight—it felt like a dancer who wasn’t just working with her body, but working for it. While we often associate Odissi and many other Indian classical forms with softness, flow, and lyrics, in Satpathy’s body, I saw resistance and resilience. Watching her practice, I felt grace had never looked this powerful.

Now in her 50s, Satpathy continues to perform full-length solo pieces with an intensity that would challenge most dancers half her age. She lifts weights and works on mobility. She has thought deeply about what her body needs in order to continue doing what she loves. And then she’s gone out and done it.

As I speak with her over a Zoom call where she talks about her dance form with almost glittering eyes, I am reminded of something simple but important: Grace doesn’t happen by default. It’s sculpted, with attention, hard work, and grit. “I trust stillness more than movement. I trust simplicity more than decoration.” Satpathy says almost like a realisation rather than a statement. She’s talking about how she chooses to dance now, after four decades of inhabiting one of India’s most evocative classical forms.

At her most recent solo show in Doha, there was no narrative arc and no obvious markers of classical performance. She entered once and exited an hour later. “There are no textual themes. It’s unfamiliar for those who come expecting the usual format,” she explains. “But once the locking in happens, then it’s a beautiful, sensual, and sentimental ride till the end. Everybody gets overwhelmed in the end, including me.” Such a format leaves little room for detachment—neither for the performer nor the audience. “No one can be lazy,” she tells me. For Satpathy, this is the kind of dancing that matters now—the kind that demands attention, presence, rigour. The kind that strips everything to its essence and asks for your whole self in return.

But rigour is something Satpathy is used to. Her life in dance has been shaped as much by grit as it has by grace. Her training began in Odisha, where for 13 years she absorbed the form through repetition and sheer physical labour. It was only later, at Nrityagram in Bengaluru, that a more layered understanding of the body took shape. Under the guidance of her guru Protima Gauri, and along with other movement specialists—practitioners of yoga, kalaripayattu, and contemporary forms—Satpathy began to develop what would eventually become a fiercely embodied, analytical, and intuitive relationship with Odissi.

Having danced for over 40 years, she recognises how age reshapes endurance, vocabulary, and imagination. “My body is changing every single day. And my experience is growing too. So, if I look at it in 10-year thresholds, every decade I feel like I arrive at a new threshold that alters how I dance.” She goes on to explain how our energy is high till we are 30. “After that, you have to negotiate how you dance so it doesn’t look like you’re trying to perform. I perform less now, but it remains powerful in some way. And I never want the audience to notice a lack.”

Satpathy says she responds to every dancing moment with “complete authenticity.” But when I point out that her videos defy her age and how even at 37, I cannot imagine doing even half of it, she laughs and shrugs it off. “You can, if you practise every day,” Satpathy assures me.

Her fitness philosophy, however, has evolved significantly. In her early years of training, she was taught a basic set of exercises. “Nobody analysed anything or talked about anatomy,” she recalls. “But it gave us internal awareness—stamina, flexibility, musculature. Still, it was just one set of exercises.” But her guru at Nrityagram emphasised conditioning. “I had a deep interest in that and I took notes every day,” she remembers. “Eventually, she asked me to lead the conditioning sessions for the other dancers.”

This devotion to structure and exploration culminated in a turning point around 2019, as she approached 50. “I started weight training by myself. No one told me to. I just thought—if my feet are carrying 50 kilograms today, what happens if I train them to carry 60? Will the endurance grow?” It did. She added resistance bands and joint mobility to her regimen, creating a hybrid fitness practice. “I’ve heard dancers say after 50, they have to warm up for an hour just to dance for 15 minutes,” she says. “But I haven’t had to do that yet. My training suits my body. And I’m still able to perform with clarity and capacity.”

Until 2019, Satpathy had brought others’ visions to life on stage—most notably those of her long-time duet partner and choreographer, Surupa Sen. “I was always challenged by her choreography, deeply fulfilled. I wouldn’t have known the difference had I not stepped out,” she reflects. But when she did, something profound unfolded. “My first performance, Abhipsa, is my fullest expression of myself.”

The word abhipsa means desire, or seeking. Through this repertoire, Satpathy confronted Odissi tradition not with rebellion, but with questions. “What do I want to say? What do I want of my Odissi?” She divided Abhipsa into four parts—prayer, sensuality, catharsis, and exaltation. “It begins with stillness and ends with moksha.” What emerged from this is not simply a woman choreographing herself. It was a performer sculpting inner landscapes—merging divinity and humanity, structure and intuition.

As a true performer, Satpathy resists any strict lens of gender. “Classical dance teaches us to detach from identity,” she explains. “When I am on stage, I am not this person talking to you. I am someone else entirely. And that being has no gender.” This ability to shapeshift—to become Radha, Krishna, a demon, a devotee—is fundamental to the Odissi grammar. Her own choreography plays with this freedom. “When I invoke Shiva, I’m not religious—I’m agnostic. But I can embody Shiva with complete belief. I must, to convince the audience.” Solo Odissi performance often demands continuous shifting—between emotion and abstraction, stillness and dynamism, god and devotee. “We pretend to be gods every day,” she says. “That’s a luxury (maybe only) dancers have.”

While she may be a master in a classical form, her voice is contemporary. Her use of social media is almost like a challenge to the idea that classical dancers must remain offline, inaccessible, and stuck in the past. For me, Satpathy’s presence on Instagram has been a revelation. Over 150k followers is no small feat for any Indian classical dancer. “I never thought about followers,” she admits. “I was just used to being seen—at Nrityagram, someone was always watching. During the pandemic, there were no eyes on me. So, I started posting—snippets, thoughts, and captions.”

Satpathy comes across as a person who would interrogate everything. And her dance is no exception. “Earlier we had 20 movements—10 chaukha, 10 tribhangi. I’ve expanded it to over 500 unique units. Each carries the essence of Odissi. Even if dancers in Spain or Brazil have never been to Odisha, they feel it,” she shares. Satpathy believes that innovation in the classical dance form should continue. “Let it grow. Let people try things. As long as the ‘Odissiness’ remains, everything is welcome.” Satpathy is someone who finds freedom inside boundaries. “If I’m confined to a prison, the taste of freedom is even more potent. That’s how I see classical structure.”

In Odissi, she found this freedom when she began her solo practice. During the isolation of the pandemic, she returned to the basics. “Not to teach, not to be seen, but just to experience the form internally,” she shares. And from that internal experience, a new vocabulary emerged. “I feel like I’m a baby in this,” she says. “There’s so much more to explore. I might need two more lifetimes to do justice to Odissi. So, in the last decade or half-decade of my dancing life, I’m letting myself go. I don’t want to leave anything unexplored.”

And if one day, her body stops dancing? I ask.

“I will still imagine Odissi. I’ll choreograph through instruction. I’ll continue teaching. This digital age allows me to articulate dance clearly. I will be pickled in Odissi for as long as I can be.” And that phrase—“pickled in Odissi”— sums up her lifelong entanglement with the dance form.

Editor: Rasna Bhasin (@rasnabhasin)

Digital Editor: Sonal Ved (@sonalved)

Photographer: Nishanth Radhakrishnan (@nishanth.radhakrishnan)

Stylist: Samar Rajput (@samar.rajput05)

Cover Design: Mandeep Singh Khokhar (@mandy_khokhar19)

Editorial Coordinator: Shalini Kanojia (@shalinikanojia)

Make-up Artist: Kiran Kiran Denzongpa (@kirandenzongpa), Agency: Feat Artists (@featartists)

Hair Artist: Shivani Joshi (@sculpt.ing_), Agency: Feat Artists (@featartists)

Set Design: Janhavi Patwardhan (@artnut_j)

Hair Artist Assistant: Yaikhom Sushiel (@sushiru_)

Make-up Assistant: Sharmila Gurung

Fashion Assistant: Aditya Singh (@adityakamalsingh)

Bijayini is wearing dress, gloves, and tights, all AFEW Rahul Mishra (@rahulmishra_7) (@afew.rahulmishra); earrings, House of Umrao (@house_of_umrao)

 

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