Gangadhar Pradhan

Pradhan was born in Parikula, a village in Puri district, Odisha.^[1][2] He was a sickly baby; his father, Muralidhar Pradhan, a farmer, and mother, Dwitika Devi, whose previous children had died, dedicated him to Balunkeshwar, the presiding deity of the temple in the nearby village of Dimirisena.^[3] When he was six, he became a Gotipua dancer at the temple and discovered a vocation for dance. He later trained at Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya^[3] in Odissi and in playing the mardala, and accompanied Sanjukta Panigrahi as her co-dancer and percussionist.^[1][2] He was an accomplished choreographer.^[2][3]

He founded Orissa Dance Academy in Bhubaneswar in 1975, and Konark Natya Mandap in Konark in 1986, and also established both the Konark Dance Festival (also in 1986) and the Dhauli dance festival (in 2001),^[1][3] as well as several smaller dance festivals, and ran the Chitralekha Dance Academy Festival in Canada.^[3] He was a past president of the Orissa Sangeet Natak Akademi.^[1] In his later years, he organised a project to document the folk dance styles of the state.^[2]