ABSTRACT
Odissi was canonized in India as “classical dance” in the late 1950s. 1 This makes it barely half a century old. It is now taught and performed in Orissa, in major Indian cities outside Orissa, and globally in South Asian diasporic contexts. The history of Odissi and its classicization is complex, involving a convergence of different performative traditions—the ritualistic singing and dancing of the mahari temple dancers of the Jagannath temple in Puri, the acrobatic dancing of the gotipuas or street boy-performers, the martial arts of the akhada or the gymnasia of Puri, and the naca or the local dance theater of the Orissan villages—in a balancing act of religious ritualism and secular practice. 2
