MELBOURNE, August 2026: There was little time for the artists of Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya to pause after the success of LEGACY – Odissi Festival. Within days, the company moved from celebrating four acclaimed performances to rehearsing for Mavi Rasa’s Bharata Natya Arangetram on August 22.

Staged at Darebin Arts Centre on August 1, 2 and 8, LEGACY celebrated the 60th birthday of Krushna Chandra Ray while honouring the extraordinary artistic legacy created by Dr Chandrabhanu OAM and Ray through Odissi dance and music.
The festival drew enthusiastic audience responses, with praise for the dancers’ professionalism, sophisticated staging, costumes, lighting and music. Several audience members described LEGACY as the company’s best production yet.
A major highlight was Dashamahavidya, featuring seven senior Odissi dancers — Anu Pande, Anupriya Ravindran, Jayshree Khoosal, Nidhya Sakathevan, Priya Chakraborty, Roshni Vellore and Soumya Veeraraghavan. First taught to the dancers last year, the demanding work returned with greater depth and maturity, as the performers increasingly internalised its complex spiritual and philosophical dimensions.
The following week brought Navadurga, with nine dancers portraying the divine manifestations of Goddess Durga in a powerful and moving ensemble performance.
Another major success was the premiere of Ravana Tandava Stotram, featuring a new musical composition by Krushna Chandra Ray and choreography by Dr Chandrabhanu. Enhanced by Dr Chandrabhanu’s lighting design and insightful commentary, the work emerged as one of the festival’s grandest moments.

Across four performances, audiences experienced four Pallavi ensemble works and eight Ashtapadis from Jayadeva’s Geeta Govinda, performed by accomplished soloists. The demanding repertoire also placed enormous demands on the musicians, who mastered and rehearsed numerous complex scores within a remarkably short period.
The production celebrated the breadth of the Odissi tradition, incorporating Sanskrit songs, sacred verses and shlokas alongside music in the Odia language.
For Ambika Docherty, the festival also marked a deeply personal return to the stage after almost two decades — an experience that rekindled a long-dormant part of her artistic identity.
Adding another emotional dimension was the restoration of an original Ganesha artwork by the late Geoffrey Goldie, created in the early 1970s as one of his first stage designs for Chandrabhanu. Its unveiling on opening night prompted an immediate gasp and applause from the audience.
With more than 20 works presented, LEGACY explored only a fraction of the vast body of work created by Chandrabhanu and Krushna Chandra Ray.
The response has already suggested what comes next: LEGACY Part 2.
(GDI)