Debashree Das speaks like she dances, with a quiet certainty, precise gestures, and a gaze that carries centuries. When she begins to describe her journey, she doesn’t talk about achievements or titles. She returns to Bhubaneswar, Odisha, where her story first found rhythm.
“It started with devotion,” she says. “I was drawn to the divine stories, to the music, the expressions, everything that makes Odissi what it is.” Debashree trained at the Odissi Dance Academy under the legendary Guru Gangadhar Pradhan, and today, in Australia, she carries that lineage with careful hands. Her work is not nostalgia. It is practice, preservation, and presence.
Now based in Sydney, Debashree continues to perform and teach Odissi, a classical dance form rooted in storytelling, gesture, and bhakti. Her academy, Nrityashree, has become a quiet cultural force. It is a place where children learn to stand still before they learn to move, where the spirit of Jayadev’s verses is allowed to breathe.
“I try to help students find their own voice,” she explains. “Odissi is discipline, yes, but it is also emotion. There is no point in perfect movement without feeling.” She’s patient when she teaches. But she also demands care, in the eyes, the hands, and the silence before a pose.
Her performances are never just shows. They are offerings. “One of my most personal moments was performing my late mother’s favourite bhajan on stage,” she says. “I don’t think the audience even existed for me that day. It was just me and her.”
The connection between memory and movement seems to animate much of Debashree’s work. When she speaks about the philosophy of dance, she is less interested in grandeur and more in understanding. “Even if you’re performing something very rooted in Indian mythology, you can still make it relatable,” she says. “Love, longing, joy, play, these are universal. I always explain a bit of the story before a piece. Then, through abhinaya, the rest is clear. Expression crosses language.”
This approach has made her performances especially resonant in multicultural settings. She’s danced at Ratha Yatra, Harmony Day, temple festivals, and formal state events. No two audiences are the same. No story lands in quite the same way. But she insists the essence always gets through. “The body knows how to communicate,” she says. “If the dancer feels it, others will feel it.”
Her process is meticulous. She begins with a theme. Sometimes a poem, sometimes a specific emotion. Then she builds the work from there. “There’s tala, the rhythm, then the choreography, then bhava, the emotional expression,” she explains. “Group work takes time. It’s about synchronicity, but also collective mood. With solo work, I have to internalise every shift in the character. The pauses matter as much as the movement.”
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This balancing act of precision and surrender defines her art. But her journey hasn’t been without its challenges. Training students in Australia, where classical Indian dance is unfamiliar to many, comes with its own set of hurdles. “There are questions of context,” she says. “How do you explain devotion through movement to someone who’s never seen a temple dance? But I’ve learned not to see this as a limitation. It’s a doorway. Every question brings us closer to the essence.”
She is open about where she wants to take her work next. “I’d love to collaborate across genres, music, theatre, even spoken word,” she says. “There’s space for fusion when it’s thoughtful. I’m also interested in outreach, schools, universities, anywhere there’s curiosity. And of course, I want my students to have more opportunities to perform and share what they’ve learned.”
That blend of openness and grounding seems rare in an age where much is performed for approval. For Debashree, the approval is internal. “When I dance, I return to something. It’s hard to describe. But I know it when I feel it, that silence inside.”
She credits her gurus, Gangadhar Pradhan, Sarita Mishra, and Bichitra Nanda Swain, for shaping her not just as a dancer, but as a person. “They taught me to treat the art with respect,” she says. “You can’t rush it. You can’t dilute it. It’s not just movement. It’s a way of seeing the world.”
In that way, every performance is a kind of prayer. And every student, a new verse in a continuing poem.
Anyone wishing to collaborate or connect with Debashree can reach her at das.debashree@gmail.com.
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