An American Odyssey

It has really been an odyssey – a long and adventurous journey, all the way from Detroit in U S A to Odisha in India. In my last post I have narrated how two foreigners – Italians – have devoted themselves to the mesmerizing Odissi dance form. This post is about the journey of Sharon Lowen to Odissi.

 Recently I had the good fortune of watching this wonderous artiste perform at Bhubaneswar.

Sharon started her journey in Indian classical dance forms in 1970 in her home town Detroit in U S A. Earlier, she had received training in Western ballet, modern dance, puppetry and theatre. While studying Fine Arts, Asian Studies and Dance at Michigan University, she was attracted by Manipuri dance. At the age of 22, she came to India in 1973 on a Fulbright Scholarship to learn more about Manipuri dance. She came in contact with the legendary Odissi Dance Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra when he was conducting a workshop. She was immediately fascinated by Odissi dance. Then she participated in workshop on Odissi dance for 3 months. For quite sometime, she stayed at Cuttack, the erstwhile Capital of Odisha and became a disciple of Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra who belonged to Cuttack.

Sharon has presented a number of concerts throughout Asia, North America, U.K. and Middle East. .She performed Odissi dance in the Festival of India in U S A in 1985. Sharon calls India her second home. She likes to call her home “ a small farm house in a city”. In her own words, she learned very early when she lived in Odisha that “my behaviour had to be equivalent of a good daughter-in-law and that one’s professional life should be above reproach and that’s an aspect of respect for the art.”

Sharon has set up MANSA , her ‘Centre for Arts Without Frontiers’ in Delhi. She also teaches at the American Embassy School and at workshops in India and abroad. She deeply believes in the traditional Indian ‘Guru-Shishya parampara’ and imparts this to her students.

 She calls the typical body stance in Odissi as ‘a beautiful asymmetrical S-curve which is very sculpturesque’. “While dancing, I feel like flying.” she adds. Odissi leans heavily on the Radha-Krishna lore and the typical stance of the flute-playing Krishna is Tribhangi Thani – Krishna stands with an S-like posture in which the body is curved at the waist and the neck and thus can be divided into 3 parts. Sharon has also mastered Chhau, the martial dance form of Mayurbhanj in Odisha.

 View her Odissi dance in the precincts of the famous Konark temple in Odisha in this  video.


 Here she has wonderfully presented the heroines of Kalidas in Ritusamhar, Abhijnana Shakuntalam, Malabikagnimitra,Meghadootam and Kumarasambhabam.