Classical Dance Form Research Articles

Louise Lightfoot and Rajkumar Priyagopal Singh: The First Manipuri Dance Tour of Australia, 1951

Manipur, a small state in the North-Eastern corner of India, is traditionally regarded as the home of gandharvas (the celestial dancers). Manipuri is one of the 11 dance styles recognized by the Ministry of Culture of India that have incorporated various key techniques mentioned in the ancient treatises like the Natya Shastra and Bharatarnava and has been placed under ‘a common heritage’ called Indian classical dance forms (shastriya nritya) – Bharata Natyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, Odissi, Sattriya, Chhau, Gaudiya Nritya, and Thang Ta. In 1951 Louise Lightfoot, the ‘Australian mother of Kathakali’ dance, visited the remote mountain state of Manipur to learn more about Manipuri dance. Soon she was successful in persuading and bringing eminent exponents of Manipuri dancing style Jagoi, Rajkumar Priyagopal Singh and Lakshman Singh, to tour Australia. Priyagopal, with the help of Lightfoot and their international tours, to some extent, de-provincialized and also popularized the Manipuri dance and paved the way for other dancers from North-eastern region of India in the International art world. Through this paper I attempt to highlight the contribution of Lightfoot in the promotion of Manipuri dance and in Australia. I here also engage explicitly with Priyagopal and Lightfoot's unusual dance collaboration and trace the historical journey and reception of a Manipuri dance in Australia.

Considerations of dance transmission processes: adapting Bharata Natyam in a Singapore primary school

This qualitative case study has, for its purpose, an examination of the pedagogies and practices of a master Bharata Natyam dance instructor working within a Singapore primary school context. It explores the instructor’s adaptation within an after-school weekly activity of the South Indian traditional classical dance form. Considerations of dance pedagogy through the lens of multiculturalism serve as a springboard for discussion on the findings of the study. The inculcation of values development through the guru–shishya relationship, the adaptation of the dance transmission processes from a religious to a secular space, and the negotiation of the dance form towards relevant contemporary contexts for students within a multicultural context were key points of contemplation towards implications for dance education.

Effect of Bharatnatyam Dancing on Body Composion of Bengalee Female Children

Obesity, defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health, is on the rise including in the pediatric population in developed as well as less developed countries. As children are now fast adopting computer based activity both habitual and recreational with minimal level of physical effort, the prevalence of childhood obesity is a major concern. Indian dancing has been practised as a popular recreational activity for a long period of time. Bharatnatyam dancing is a traditional form of Indian classical dance which involves different body postures with continuous rhythmic body movements and therefore it may have some impact on body composition. A study has been undertaken in this backdrop, to assess the effect of Indian classical. Bharatanatyam dancing on body composition variables of girl children. Female individuals (12-18 year), receiving Bharatanatyam dancing training for at least a period of five years and practicing daily for an hour for 6 days in a week, constituted the Bharatanatyam dancing group (DG). Children of similar age and socioeconomic background with no regular physical activity including any form of dancing were randomly selected for constituting control group. It has been observed that training in Bharatnatyam dancing has significant (P < 0.05) favourable impact on the body composition parameters measured anthropometrically compared to the age and sex matched counterparts. It could therefore be concluded that Bharatnatyam dancing has specific beneficial impact on maintaining favourable body composition variables in children and thereby reducing the chance of obesity in adulthood.

Adaptation of Bharatanatyam dance pedagogy for multicultural classrooms: questions and relevance in a North American university setting

This article opens up questions around introducing Bharatanatyam, a form of Indian classical dance, to undergraduate learners within a North American university setting. The aim is to observe how the learners understood and received a particular cultural practice and to explore issues related to learning goals, curriculum content, approaches to pedagogy and classroom management. A qualitative approach used the combined methods of action research, ethnography and autoethnography to reveal layers of meanings related to the nature of learning and challenges incurred in implementing traditional teaching method into practice. It is discussed how critical spaces for dialogue and deliberation between the learners and the teacher have generated an adaptive method for accommodating the needs of multicultural classrooms. The study recommends further inquiry-based dialogues among scholars and practitioners to utilise the critical theories for classroom instructions.

Embodied Migration: Performance Practices of Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Communities in London

This paper examines issues of embodied performativity and transmission of dance practices amongst Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in the suburbs of London, focusing on how the experience of migration has shaped the making of cultural and ethnic identities. Using data gathered from recent ethnographic work in British Tamil temples and in the Tamil community, it addresses the complex discourse between the religious and political sense of selfhood articulated in these Sri Lankan Tamil groups, particularly in relation to dance and ritual performance, and seeks to answer questions regarding the place of dance and movement in defining such identity. In addition, I note the expansion in transmission and performance of the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam in British temple locations and the presence of trance dancing at Hindu festivals, and question how investigating migration as embodied practice might lead to greater understanding of such highly politicised contexts.

‘Who Is My Good Neighbor?’ Classical Indian Dance in the Prophetic Work of the Church

Abstract The use of the classical dance form bharatanatyam by Catholic Christians has inspired vigorous resistance from Hindus and Christians alike. The most salient of these objections relate to the use of power. Some see this form of ministry as a colonialist appropriation; others argue that it perpetuates caste and religious values that do not belong to the majority of Indian Christians, who are Dalits. While the Church may eventually abandon this form of ministry for such reasons, I argue that the case of Nav Sadhana Kala Kendra, a Catholic school of dance and music in Varanasi that produces dance programs on video disc and YouTube, subverts both forms of hegemony.

Creativity and the code: training in Mohinīāṭṭam

Training in classical Indian dance has to be oriented to two aspects: learning the ‘code’ that lends the dance stability and continuity, and acquiring the competence to innovate and deviate from the code. The interplay of norm and deviation gives the tradition its vitality and prevents its stagnation. However, in practice, the code of dance and its compositions are often treated as sacrosanct. Despite the modern emphasis on individual creativity, in practice there are issues that hamper creativity, and promote adherence to fixed repertoires. In most Indian performance traditions the learning of the code is a difficult and long process, described as a form of yoga, which results in the ‘transformation’ of the individual. While the idea of dance as yoga shapes it into a positive practice, the idea that the gurus are the embodiment of the code makes innovation a difficult enterprise that may even earn a guru's disfavour. This is despite the fact that the codes in their present forms have been reconstructed into disciplines of practice in modern institutions of learning, suggesting that they are open and not closed systems. We examine training in the feminine classical Indian dance form of mohinīāṭṭam by focussing on the different phases in training with special reference to the style founded by Kalamandalam Kalyanikuttyamma and suggesting the potential areas for innovation. We also examine the formulation of mohinīāṭṭam as a discipline of practice at Kerala Kalamandalam, emphasising its ‘constructed’ nature.

“Even the dinner ladies are teaching dance!” Pedagogic Explorations of South Asian Dance in Britain

This lecture-demonstration examines some of the tensions and contradictions found in the teaching of South Asian dance in Britain through using a demonstration by Leicester Kathak dancer Nilima Devi and evidence gleaned from Ann David's ethnographic research amongst dance students and teachers in Hindu communities in Leicester. It considers how issues of tradition and change within an arena seen as “cultural heritage” are incorporated into pedagogic practice. It questions different perceptions of dance by teenage students and their teachers, as well as articulating some of the problematic areas in the teaching of classical and popular dance forms, such as Kathak, Bharatanatyam, and Bollywood.

‘In‐between spaces’: an investigation into the embodiment of culture in contemporary dance1

Beginning with the theory of cultural embodiment, this paper suggests that the work of some contemporary choreographers, because of the use they make of their cultural backgrounds, inhabits ‘in‐between’ spaces. Cultural embodiment, it is suggested, leads to the choreographer’s absorption of movement as a source of historical information and an extension of their cultural characteristics. Shobana Jeyasingh is cited as an example of a choreographer who applies elements of the Indian dance form Bharata Natyam to her contemporary choreography in Duets with automobiles, exploring Rosi Braidotti’s idea of nomadic subjectivity. Similar to Jeyasingh, Akram Khan’s choreography is also informed by both eastern and western cultures. The classical Indian dance form of Kathak is embedded into Khan’s movement vocabulary. With Rush and Zero Degrees, which are analysed, it is suggested Khan produces a ‘double consciousness’ of two cultures. As a result of the cultural hybridity explored in Khan’s works, new identities are formed in the overlapping cultures and it is proposed that Khan’s work exists in ‘in‐between spaces’.

Decoding the Modern Practice of Bharatanatyam

As the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam globalizes, it suffers under the gravitas of “unbroken tradition.” To numerically characterize tradition in contemporary India, surveys were administered to 212 practitioners on execution, values, knowledge, and pedagogy. Statistical analysis revealed extensive diversity, lack of a consistent core, and fundamental drivers of variation.

Migratory Rituals or Classical Dance Forms?: “Trance” Dance and Bharatanatyam as Signifiers of Tamil Identity in Diasporic Hindu Communities in Britain

This paper examines the performance of religion in British Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu communities using ethnographic research to investigate the use of classical dance and trance, or embodied dance, as performative practice. Contemporary U.K. evidence of Tamil Saivite worship shows an affiliation of dance and ritual being articulated and reinvented through the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam and through its transmission in the temple environment in an increasing display of embodied diasporic Hinduism.

Bharatanatyam Performed: A Typical Recital

Originally written as a chapter in a Master's thesis in the Anthropology of Human Movement, “A Structural Analysis of Meaning in Movement; The Hand Gestures of Indian Classical Dance” (New York University, 1983), this article conducts Rajika Puri's readers through a Bharatanatyam performance, providing relevant facts about the history of the form, its structure (musical and otherwise), and above all its profound depth of meaning. She discusses a Bharatanatyam dancer's costume, make-up, use of music, and the repertoire of a typical performance lasting two-and-a-half hours. Puri introduces the complexities of abhinaya (roughly “mime”) and hasta mudras (stylized hand gestures), revealing how it is that Indian dancers combine dancing and acting () with so-called pure movement () in every performance. She tells us that both abhinaya and are included in , the word that is closest to the idea of “dance” in India. And, is the main vehicle of (theater). In an elegant exegesis of the theory of rāsa (“taste” or “flavor”) Puri introduces us to the metaphysical concepts that permeate Indian classical dance forms. She concludes by saying that, “Wherever they may be found in the world, the great traditions of dancing deliberately and consciously convey meaning. They are not simply mindless entertainments.”

A North Indian Classical Dance Form: Lucknow Kathak

Readers are conducted through the 12 sections of a typical Kathak performance that starts with vandana (or slōkam)—a prayer in Sanskrit addressing a god or goddess—and ends with tatkar, which denotes a slapping foot section that consists of bell-and footwork alone. Here, drummer and dancer interact so that “the dancer becomes as though bodiless and made of pure sound.” Brilliant though the tatkar may be, however, the predominant theme of North Indian Kathak dancing (from a Sanskrit word kathaka, meaning “narrator”) lies in the fleeting appearances and longer stories of Radha (a Gopi, or milkmaid) and Krishna (an incarnation of the god Vishnu).We discover that Kathak today is a theater art, but it still draws its inspiration from the literature of Vaishnavism, from the (ancient stories of the gods) and the devotional love poetry of medieval India. The sacred and human loves of Krishna and his beloved disciple, Radha, are woven into all aspects of the Kathak dance, as is clearly pointed out during discussions of the music, costumes and finally the role of the Kathak dancer, who is a creative artist having unusual improvisational abilities. The eyes seem to remember the eternal beauty of Radha and Krishna, so that both dancer and audience may be transported to a plane where they all can taste the rāsa of Lucknow Kathak.

Technique and Theory in the Work of Kapila Vatsyayan

As a scholar and practitioner of Bharatanatyam I would like, foremost, to express my gratitude to Kapila Vatsyayan for her comprehensive, in-depth studies of Indian classical dance forms. Her work includes attention to both distant and recent epochs in the history of Indian dance as well as to current practice. Her analysis of many divergent sources has laid the groundwork for any academic study of classical Indian dance. She not only provides an exhaustive account of Indian dance in the past and present but also interprets the relationship among aesthetic theory texts, historical dance practice, and contemporary, classical Indian choreography in a nuanced and sophisticated manner.Because the strengths of Vatsyayan's research are manifold, I restrict my consideration here to a narrow focus. Specifically, this discussion focuses on her concept of dance technique as an integral part of her analytical framework. This essay also addresses the ramifications of her methodology for current and future work in the field of dance studies. In particular, I consider how Vatsyayan's understanding of the bodily subject offers an important paradigm for current writings within dance scholarship, especially those that interpret dance praxis in relation to social theory (1). Moreover, I limit my attention to two of Vatsyayan's major works: Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts and Indian Classical Dance.

Transcending Gender in the Performance of Kathak

Kathak, a classical dance form of Northern India, portrays an iconographic representation of the cultural constructs of the Hindu world view, most particularly, the ideology of gender roles within the culture. Essentially a dance form that emerged from within the Hindu religious beliefs and practices, Kathak was significantly influenced by the bhakti movement popularized in the early medieval period on the one hand, and on the other, by its incorporation in the Moghal courts after the fifteenth century. However, I limit my arguments to the Hindu concept of gender and its portrayal in the performance of Kathak. This paper focuses on the fluidity of gender performance in light of the indigenous philosophical concepts of “oneness” or non-dualism exemplified in Kathak abhinaya (1). This study is inspired by my observation and participatory experience as a dancer-performer of this form.

Analogy between training for dancers and problems of adjustment to microgravity: An evaluation of the subjective vertical in dancers

“Moderne dance” (as opposed to a more academic or classical dance form) uses techniques from kinesiology, anatomy and improvization which are adapted to a cultural, technological and political environment. The function of a choreographic system is to take and give a measure of the world. This includes, with the present tendency of the evolution of culture, a new “naturalism” which seeks the secrets of the body. Dance movements express in terms of space the dimension fo the infinite. It gives somehow the measure of a world within which everything is relative. Except for the speed of light, time and space are bound together by the same principle. The qualities of body awareness and specific motricity in dancers imply—besides a strict discipline—balance, coordination, muscular performance and perfect orientation, problems that astronauts also encounter in microgravity. Could chosen exercises used in modern dance technique be applied to the training of astronauts? Dancer-choreographer Kitsou Dubois has been working in this direction since 1988. She was granted a “Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs” by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to carry on with her research at NASA, Houston, Tex. in April 1989. It allowed her to investigate the reality of this analogy. She intends to evaluate the dancers' subjective vertical refering to Mittelstaedt's observations on the proportional relationship between “space sickness” and some astronauts poor evaluation of the subjective vertical. This study should create a relationship between a choreographer's empirical intuition and a scientific reality.

Bharatha Natyam-What Are You?

Let me tell you a story. I grew up in the cultural city of Madras, where I learned bharatha natyam, a form of South Indian classical dance, from a very young age. My dance teachers told me a story, a story they were never tired of repeating. They told me that bharatha natyam traces its origins to the Natyashastra, a detailed, ancient text on dramaturgy authored by the sage Bharatha (Bharatha-Muni), ca. 300 B.C. Sitting at their feet, I listened in wide-eyed awe. They told me that this dance was once called sadir and that it was performed in the sacred precincts of the temple. They said that the devadasi (temple dancers) who practiced this art form lived and danced happily in the temple environments. I nodded my head in agreement. But then the devadasi turned and profaned the art form, they said suddenly, and rather angrily. Frightened by their anger, I asked rather hesitantly about how they had profaned the art. They looked around them to see if anybody was eavesdropping, and whispered into my ear: they said that dancing became associated with nautch girls because of the corrupt ways of the devadasi. Their personal life, reflected in the art form, expressed itself in the crude and literal language of the nautch girl. I did not understand anything they said. I was too young and frightened. A highly complex system rooted in religion had become corrupted till the respectable people of the south initiated a campaign in the late 1920s to abolish the ill-reputed devadasi system. What about the dance then, I interjected? They smiled benevolently at my anxiety and said that important cultural institutions, such as the Music Academy in

U.S. 4,613,645 Whisker reinforcement

“Moderne dance” (as opposed to a more academic or classical dance form) uses techniques from kinesiology, anatomy and improvization which are adapted to a cultural, technological and political environment. The function of a choreographic system is to take and give a measure of the world. This includes, with the present tendency of the evolution of culture, a new “naturalism” which seeks the secrets of the body. Dance movements express in terms of space the dimension fo the infinite. It gives somehow the measure of a world within which everything is relative. Except for the speed of light, time and space are bound together by the same principle. The qualities of body awareness and specific motricity in dancers imply—besides a strict discipline—balance, coordination, muscular performance and perfect orientation, problems that astronauts also encounter in microgravity. Could chosen exercises used in modern dance technique be applied to the training of astronauts? Dancer-choreographer Kitsou Dubois has been working in this direction since 1988. She was granted a “Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs” by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to carry on with her research at NASA, Houston, Tex. in April 1989. It allowed her to investigate the reality of this analogy. She intends to evaluate the dancers' subjective vertical refering to Mittelstaedt's observations on the proportional relationship between “space sickness” and some astronauts poor evaluation of the subjective vertical. This study should create a relationship between a choreographer's empirical intuition and a scientific reality.

The Expression of Emotion in Court Dances of Yogjakarta

When viewing Javanese dance for the first time, one may wonder about the fixed expressions of the faces, and may also find it difficult to decipher particular events in the story because of the lack of cues from changes in expression. In many dances, the dancer's expression is a soft smile, with eyes relaxed, unmoving and lids slightly lowered. He assumes this expression before he enters the place in which he is performing, and maintains it throughout the dance. This practice is in marked contrast to another non-European classical dance form, Bharata Natyam of India (which has influenced Javanese dance to some extent) in which the dancer is trained to make strong facial and eye movements to express emotions such as fear, serenity and anger. In a discussion at the International Ramayana Festival in 1971, a noted South Indian dancer, Rukmini Devi, remarked that there is no way to express emotion except through the face. This is certainly true in Indian dance forms such as Bharata Natyam, Kathak, and Kathakali. Yogjanese practice also contrasts with classical European Ballet, in which the dancer has to express much of the story in mime, and with changing facial expression.

A System of Ethnic Dance Notation

s a student of ethnochoreography I found myself facing a major problem while trying to record and discuss ethnic dances: namely, how can one notate quickly while doing field work, and then write papers for others in related fields to study. The need seems to be for a system that is basic, flexible (for use with various forms), yet with a minimum set of symbols that might be followed by interested scholars. A few years back I found myself studying a dance form which I was unable, at the time, to perform. Necessity mothered the invention which I present here. Several persons in the field of dance and ethnochoreography have requested me to have it published. With this presentation I hope to receive responses from any interested student or scholar who might find it useful in his work. The only way to test its value is to have it tried for its merits or failures. Where there appear to be inadequacies I should like very much to hear and know of them along with possible suggestions for remedies. At the time this system evolved I was studying the classical dance form of South India, called Bharata Natyam, and, specifically, the special basic movements, called adavus, which occur in the pure dance passages (nrtta). Adavus make up a beautifully progressive system of discipline designed to teach the student the entire range of possibilities that can be used in the dances themselves. This notation system seems satisfactory for this particular solo dance form, even admitting the possibility of recording differences in style between one dancer and another.