Surendra Nath Jena

Surendra Nath Jena lived in the small village of Uchapur in the Bhadrak district of Odisha. He belonged to a very poor family of farmers. His father Kalandi Charan Jena died at early age and his mother Gukhuni Devi Jena brought him up by selling vegetables and fish in the local market. His mother belonged to an artist family of local singers and Jatra actors. Due to very less interest in studying in school and being naughty, at the age of seven his mother put him in Asura Matha, a nearby institution where children lived and stayed to learn dance and drama.

His Jatra teacher was Anand Nayak. Soon he started giving Jatra performances of stories in the epics of Mahabharat, Puran and Ramayan. For almost thirty years, he travelled all across Odisha in bullock carts or sometimes on foot, along with Jatra Troup and gave night long performances, rehearsing and subsisting on very little money and food.

Surendra Nath Jena with his daughter Pratibha Jena Singh

A stranger, an actor in the Ras Party of Gopinathpur, offered him a job in the repertory company. A blessing indeed, he was an actor and a teacher earning twenty rupees, which was considered a good salary in rural India in those days. He became the guru of the Jaidurga Dramatic troupe of Chudwara and the Director of Jatra troupe, Sharda Kala Kunja of Nagaspur.

Guru Surendra Nath Jena spent six months in Kolkata, to learn the art of Kathakali from Bal Krishna Menon. This Kerala dance form was highly sophisticated as compared to Jatra, which is why he decided to learn it. But he could not complete his learning due to lack of money. In the 1950s, Odissi developed a dance form that was rediscovered by Oriya artists, scholars, Gotipua Gurus and Maharis named Jayantika. He spent the first five years studying the style recreated from the testimony of old Devadasis/Mahari dance and gotipuas, or young boys dressed up as women who had replaced the Maharis. With the completion of his study, he received the Nrutya Bhushan degree in Odissi Dance in the year 1965–66.

Inspiration from temple

Soon Jena left Odisha and moved to Delhi, where he joined Nritya Niketan in 1966 as an assistant, and later joined Triveni Kala Sangam, an art institution in New Delhi as an independent teacher of Odissi Dance in the year 1967. He spent all his life here, teaching many foreign and Indian students and created his unique style of Odissi until his old age 2004.

Radha and Krishna were his Ishta Devata. His style is a way of worshiping the super soul through dance.[2]

Unique style, Jena dancing

In 1966 he came to Delhi and began to develop his own style of Odissi dance. This style is unique, enriched by his deeply researched appreciation of ancient literature and Odisha temple sculpture. His choreography is an inspired essay at bringing alive those poses captured in stone, reminiscent of temple carvings. He gives as much importance to feelings(Bhav), elements in dance, as he does to basic poses(Bhangi), his opinion that one is incomplete without the other. He upholds the ancient belief that Bhakti finds expression in dance and music, that itself is form of Sadhana.[3]

His style is unique and dynamic, spiritual devotional, inspired by the temple sculpture of Odisha. It has evolved from the Similarities between images seen in Odisha's rural culture in everyday life and Odisha's various arts like Jatra, Pattachitra scrolls, Talapatra paintings, Odisha's text, the Exquisite temple of Konark, Lingraj, Jagannath Puri, Chausat Yogini etc. His style brings temple sculpture to life.[4]