Boogie Woogie India

Today’s topic “Classical Dances of India”

As we continue on our journey at this blog, we start a new informative topic to know and learn about various forms of dancing. Let us first start from Indian dancing. A request to all readers, if you are learned and experienced and would like to throw some light, please feel free to do so. Every bit of information that comes from your side will surely help the dancers especially Boogie Woogie aspirants – as they say “Knowledge increases when you share and decreases when you keep it to yourself”.

We all know India is very rich in its culture and heritage. The culture of India is the oldest that goes more then 5000 years back. This great Indian culture comprises of Indian music, Indian dance, Indian cuisines, costumes and festivals.

If we look deeply in it then every state of India has its own distinct culture and you would find much more cultural diversity within that state if you go from one zila parishad to another. No wonder that apart from so many diversities involved it still makes everyone bond closely and that is what makes the country a great Nation!

Now speaking about dancing – we have seen many times on Boogie Woogie, individuals performing classical dances. We will be talking about all forms of dancing and in future we shall talk about western and hip hop and also about classical versus western dance.

It is important if you are performing a dance number whether that is a classical number or a western number, you must have the background knowledge of it. Plus it is always a plus point if you are asked a question on stage regarding the dance that you performed and if you are able to answer it correctly then nothing like it.

As we said there are number of dances in India but lets cover few major ones and as times goes by we shall try to talk about all others.
The major classical dances are Bharat Natyam, Kuchipudi, Kathak, Manipuri and Odissi. But today we shall talk about Bharat Natyam!

Bharat Natyam comes from Tamilnadu and is named after a sage “Bharata” the author of Natya Shastra. It is said to have originated in temples and the dance is an enactment of religious themes that started somewhere between 400 BCE. There is also another meaning given to the word Bharat Natyam and that is they say the word “Bha” stands for Bhava (expression), word “Ra” stands for raga (melody) and “Ta” is suppose to be for Tala (rhythm).

Bharat Natyam as a dance form is performed on Carnatic music and it is deeply grounded with bhakti. It is said to be the embodiment of music in visual form, a ceremony or an act of devotion.  Bharat Natyam is considered to be a fire dance. It is the manisfestation of the ancient idea of a celebration of the eternal universe through the celebration of the beauty of the material body.

It involves elaborate system of postures, hand gestures, foot movements. There are 13 postures of the head and nine postures for the neck, 36 postures for eye and 37 for hands.

The Natya Shastra-based dance styles were sacred Hindu ceremonies originally conceived in order to spiritually elevate the spectators. Bharatanatyam proper is a solo dance, with two aspects, lasya, the graceful feminine lines and movements, and tandava(Sanskrit) Ananda Thandavam (Tamil) (the dance of Shiva), masculine aspect, which is identical to the Yin and Yang in the Chinese culture.

Technique of Bharat Natyam:
•    Abhinaya or Natya - dramatic art of story-telling in Bharatanatyam
•    Nritta - pure dance movements, as a medium of visual depiction of rhythms
•    Nritya combination of abhinaya and nritta

Karanas
Karanas are the 108 key transitional movements that punctuate Bharatanatyam and other classical Indian dances. Most of these 108 Karanas have a central, static pose as a base, i.e. the dancer is usually supposed to stop and maintain it for a very brief duration (0.5 sec).

Hastas
A distinctive feature of Bharata Natyam Dance is the use of expressive hand gestures as a way of communication. Hastas refers to the varieties of hand symbols that a dancer can use. Many of these hand gestures are well known. For example, Anjali is often used as a salutation when a person greets another person. There are two types of Hastas : Asamyuta and Samyuta (single and combined, respectively). Abhinayadarpanam describes 28 Asamyuta Hastas and 24 Samyuta Hastas and their usage viniyoga, although Natya Shastra mentions many more, and the usages stated in Abhinavabharati differ considerably from those of Abhinayadarpanam, which is a relatively recent text. Many hastas can be used in more than one way, depending on the song accompanying the dance, and what the dancer is trying to convey to the audience.

Adavus
A series of steps, adavus, and their execution vary greatly from style to style. Most schools recognize 108 principal adavus, while some styles include over 150 adavus. Few professional dancers use more than 60. A combination of adavus is called jathis, which make up the Nritta passages in a Bharatanatyam performance.
There is still so much more to learn about Bharat Natyam – I guess all information in one day is not good so we shall continue on it tomorrow.

Courtesy: Wikipedia.Com

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