The hottest ticket in town Sunday is “Bijayini Satpathy in Ragachitra” – seats are sold out, but names are being accepted for a waitlist by the Rasik Dance Concert Series, which brings Classical Indian dancers to Boston and is organizing Satpathy’s area debut at the Multicultural Arts Center. “We love doing our programming in Cambridge,” said Priya Bangal, co-founder of the series. “We’ve found the audience to be incredibly receptive and open-minded to different dance styles and cultures.”
Ragachitra celebrates the relationship between music and dance, stemming from the word “raga,” which translates to “melodic framework”; Satpathy, on a U.S. tour from the Eastern Indian state Odisha, is a renowned Odissi dancer who began her solo career at 50 after a quarter-century with the classical Indian dance company Nrityagram.
“Many of the body positions performed in Odissi are modeled after the figures seen alongside the walls of the temples in Odisha, where the style originates,” Bangal said. But Satpathy brings more: She’s studied not just Odissi, but also martial arts, pilates, ballet and anatomy. Like many styles of Classical Indian Dance, Odissi is experienced best in intimate spaces, allowing audience members to see the dancer’s facial expressions and small gestures of the hands. “Odissi is a very physical style, and she has a contemporary approach to the technique,” Bangal said.
“Bijayini Satpathy in Ragachitra,” 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., East Cambridge. The waitlist is here.
