Spellbound

Here I present the second part of the Odissi dance Spellbound performed by Sutra Dance Theatre, Malaysia at Alva’s Virasat 2012. Spellbound, consisted of five Odissi compositions originally choreographed by Guru Durga Charan Ranbir, rearranged into group compositions by Ramli. The five items were Mangalacharan – Saraswati Vandana, Mukhari Pallavi, Ashta Shambhu, Oriya abhinaya – Kadamba bane banshi and Aditya Archana. In my first part of photos I had covered Mangalacharan – Saraswati Vandana, Mukhari Pallavi and Ashta Shambhu. Here I present other two compositions namely Oriya abhinaya – Kadamba bane banshi and Aditya Archana.

Spellbound

Spellbound

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Spellbound

Spellbound

I had a great opportunity to witness and document Odissi dance Spellbound performed by Sutra Dance Theatre, Malaysia at Alva’s Virasat 2012. Alva’s Virasat is a national level cultural program held every year at Shobhavana, Mijar.

Spellbound

Last year Ramli Ibrahim and his Sutra Dance Theatre group had performed at Alva’s Virasat 2011 with Vision of Forever Odissi performance. I had watched that performance only on TV and unable to capture photographs due to my busy schedule that day. So this year not to miss I kept all my work aside and attended, I am really glad about it as it was truly enthralling performance. I was able to capture over 500 good photos of the performance. I am trying to present select 27 photos in this part and others in the next part next week. Selecting them and reducing from such a large number to these few was a bigger task for me than taking those photos

Spellbound

Spellbound

I also had the opportunity to try out new Adobe Lightroom 4 beta which was released to public two days back. All these photos are processed using that software. It adds 2 more modules to the existing 5 modules, namely the photo book creator and the Google map for GPS location editing. There is a new white balance brush, develop modules are extensively revamped. All these changes in Lightroom made these photos much more processable. I was having a real tough time to get the color cast off due to varied color lights used in the dance. That variation is minimized due to the improvement in Lightroom 4. I will write an extensive review soon on the improvements in the Lightroom 4 in my future blog.

Spellbound

Spellbound

The name Ramli Ibrahim is synonymous with his Malaysia based Sutra Dance Theatre which has never failed in providing surprising, thought-provoking and often exciting Odissi dance recitals. Ramli Ibrahim himself is also synonymous with the invariable production of a strong original repertoire. An imaginative, sensitive and accomplished dancer himself, Ramli always attempts to break new ground in Odissi and this particular programme named Spellbound obviously had the same objective.

Spellbound

Spellbound

Spellbound, is billed as A tryst with the timeless beauty of Odissi… and consisting of five Odissi compositions originally choreographed by Guru Durga Charan Ranbir, rearranged into group compositions by Ramli. The five items were Mangalacharan – Saraswati Vandana, Mukhari Pallavi, Ashta Shambhu, Oriya abhinaya – Kadamba bane banshi and Aditya Archana. The presentation of all the items was good and in parts, even arresting, as expected of Sutra Dance Theatre. In my first part of photos I present the first 3 items namely Mangalacharan – Saraswati Vandana, Mukhari Pallavi and Ashta Shambhu.

Spellbound

Spellbound

The female dancers were notably good – their grace and sureness speaks well of their abilities as solo dancers too. For me this was heartening. The only slightly odd feature that stood out was the lower limb movements of the male dancers. Their legs moved with a degree of effeminacy, as also the exaggerated feminine swaying of the hips – beyond a degree this becomes uncalled for in a male dancer. Ramli’s dancing was obviously outstanding; his rich experience and aesthetic sense brought out an inner ecstasy, the joy in the persona of the dancer that is so fulfilling. In comparison, Guna – the other male dancer – gave a rather dull display. The power and depth which Guna is capable of and has demonstrated previously in his last years performance, was missing here, inexplicably.

Spellbound

Spellbound

An added issue for me was the execution of the Mukahri Pallavi, specifically Guna’s role in it. The character that Guna represented could not be communicated to the audience; it certainly left me confused and in spite of a plethora of movements and poses by this dancer, the message just did not get across. A misfortune, specially when the lucidity of a choreograph fails to fulfill its function! It is also clear that Odissi, derived from one of the most ancient forms of Indian dance, has a vast grammar. It does not need to be embellished by ballet movements to heighten its aesthetic appeal.

Spellbound

Spellbound

It is refreshing to see Suthra group was not using the stitched costume. Even though Ramli’s team has been criticized for skipping the oudhni (veil) worn by female dancers, I found the costume worn by them perfectly suitable for these dances without being vulgar. However, the absence of the taitha (Armlet) was glaring; this particular ornament adds much grace and appeal to the feminine form and I am wondering why the female dancers chose to do away with it!

Spellbound

Spellbound

Ramli Ibrahim, Guna were the two male dancers.The female dancers were Shivagamavalli, Geethika Sree, Michelle Chang, Abiramavalli, Thrisherna, Jyotsna and Shobhna Kumari Bag. Special mention must be made of Sivagamavalli and Geethika Sree, who were easily a cut above the rest.

Spellbound

Spellbound

Ramli Ibrahim has done commendable service to Odissi classical dance and its spread in South East Asia and many parts of the world. His fascination with Odissi has added a touch of exactitude to his inspired performances and thought provoking choreography. The future beckons with even greater promise, and I extend profound good wishes to him on the journeys ahead.

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As promised in my last blog I am showing you how I converted the image sequence into the video. When I took the photos of that Oriental magpie Robin I was not planning to do the image sequence. Ideally a tripod mounted stationary camera would have been excellent for such an image sequence. If you plan to do time lapse series then tripod mounting is a must. The following method works well with time lapse sequences too.

Since I had the photos handheld I needed to align the main branch where it was sitting in perfect alignment. So after processing all Raw photos in Adobe Lightroom I chose the right click menu Edit in -> Open as layers in Photoshop.

Open as layers in Photoshop

This will export the photos to Adobe Photoshop and arranges all the 15 photos as layers of a single file. To align images this is ideal method.

Photoshop with photos exported as layers

I chose all the layers in Adobe Photoshop and from the Edit menu -> Auto Align Layers.

Auto Align Layers

Under the Auto Align Layers options dialog box I chose both vignette removal as well as geometric distortion under the lens correction option. This may not be necessary if you have kept the aperture constant.

Auto Align Layers options

Now Adobe Photoshop will churn away depending on the speed of your machine aligning your images.

Aligning Layers

Aligning Layers

After a short wait you will be presented with perfectly aligned images. As you can see the edges of all the images will not be aligned.

Perfectly aligned layers

Next you need to crop all the images so that they will be of the same size and will not have transparent borders. This is accomplished using crop tool in Adobe Photoshop.

Cropping the edges

Now we will explore a hidden gem in Adobe Photoshop. If you plan to export all the layers as separate files you need to go to File -> Scripts -> Export Layers to Files option.

Scripts to export layers to files

Now you will get 15 jpeg files out those 15 layers which were aligned perfectly using auto-align option. You can re-size these jpeg files to the final size of the video you want. I also added the matte frame and copyright info I usually add to all my photos. I use ImageMagick to accomplish this task as a batch file from command line.

Layers exported as JPEG files

Now since you have 15 perfectly aligned images you can started porting them to video. If you already had the aligned images by using the tripod while shooting you will start from this point onwards. Even though many would like to use Apple Quicktime Pro for creating video, my preferred software is ImageJ. ImageJ is a powerful image analysis program that was created at the National Institutes of Health. ImageJ is open-source program written in Java, which allows it to run on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. You may download this program from the source (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/). After installing ImageJ choose File -> Import -> Image Sequence from its menu.

ImageJ to import files as Image sequence

Once you point it out to the fist file in the image sequence ImmageJ will import all the 15 files and starts processing them.

Opening the Image sequence

Following is the dialog about sequence options. You can leave it default like as I did or you can change them as you wish.

Sequence options

Next you will see the image sequences presented as video for you to watch in a inbuilt ImageJ player.

Imported images as video

To save them as video file you need to choose File -> Save as -> AVI.

Export as AVI

Next dialog will give you frame rate setting option. As I wanted file to have 1 frame per second option I chose such a slow frame rate. For time lapse sequences you need to choose faster frame rates.

AVI frame rate setting

Once you choose the name for the AVI files all your image sequences will be saved as a single AVI file.

Save as AVI

I exported this AVI file to You Tube server so that it hosted for all to enjoy. Hope this tutorial will be useful for all the image sequence & time lapse enthusiasts who wants to make it into a video.