Indian Dance Forms Research Articles

Generative adversarial network based data augmentation and quantum based convolution neural network for the classification of Indian classical dance forms

The study addresses the challenges of human action recognition and analysis in computer vision, with a focus on classifying Indian dance forms. The complexity of these dance styles, including variations in body postures and hand gestures, makes classification difficult. Deep learning models require large datasets for good performance, so standard data augmentation techniques are used to increase model generalizability. The study proposes the Indian Classical Dance Generative Adversarial Network (ICD-GAN) for augmentation and the quantum-based Convolutional Neural Network (QCNN) for classification. The research consists of three phases: traditional augmentation, GAN-based augmentation, and a combination of both. The proposed QCNN is introduced to reduce computational time. Different GAN variants DC-GAN, CGAN, MFCGAN are employed for augmentation, while transfer learning-based CNN models VGG-16, VGG-19, MobileNet-v2, ResNet-50, and new QCNN are implemented for classification. The study demonstrates that GAN-based augmentation outperforms traditional methods, and QCNN reduces computational complexity while improving prediction accuracy. The proposed method achieves a precision rate of 98.7% as validated through qualitative and quantitative analysis. It provides a more effective and efficient approach compared to existing methods for Indian dance form classification.

Bharatanatyam and Art activism in the Networked Digital Space

All over the world, traditional models of art activism through dance involved performances that reached a limited audience, while the advent of networked digital spaces has vastly expanded the scope of art activism to a global level. Offering a qualitative netnographic exploration of how Bharatanatyam has been employed for such art activism in the digital space, this article examines the implications for this prominent traditional South Indian dance form in terms of stylistic changes as well as viewer reactions. Through content analysis of the viewer responses to ten popular renditions uploaded on YouTube over five years (2016–2020), we trace how the art form is evolving and how activist goals are reciprocated by the audience. Our findings confirm that Bharatanatyam has great potential to evolve by adapting novel social themes. However, while such contemporary renditions may elicit viewer responses that critically appraise specific social issues and pave the way for social change, the resulting innovations continue to co-exist with old conflicts and tensions about ‘traditional’ art and its uses.

PARATANĀṬṬIYA NAṬAṈAK KALAIÑARKAḶ MĪTĀṈA PĀTTIRAK KALVIYIṈ TĀKKAM [THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CHARACTER EDUCATION ON BHARATHANATYAM DANCERS

This article is mainly about Bharatanatyam artists. Bharatanatyam is considered to be the most ancient of the various Indian dance forms. Bharatanatyam is learned and danced by both males and females. In this article the researcher explores the effectiveness of Character Education on Bharatanatyam dancers. For this article, the survey was conducted on some dancers in Perak, Malaysia and information was gathered.Through this study, the characteristics of the dancers and their character creation are explored through character education.Through this study you can learn how Bharata artists prepare themselves by learning Bharatanatyam.Furthermore, the study explores the differences between those who learned Bharathanatyam and those who do not learn the art.This article collects data based on field research.Through this study, the researcher has gathered information about the importance of these arts among the gurus who teach this art to people.

Japanese dancers, Bollywood dance: finding authenticity at Tokyo’s Namaste India Festival

ABSTRACT By sharing the stories of the Japanese Bollywood dancers at the Namaste India Festival in Tokyo, this paper explores their self-developed hierarchy of authenticity to argue that there are multiple ways to claim and access authenticity as it relates to the performance of Bollywood dance. The dance form’s base as global, hybrid, and commercial rejects authenticity as a concept, but its performance by these groups results in meaningful cultural exchange. The appeal of this Indian dance form in Japan provides an Inter-Asia reference point from which to explore the different ways this transnational yet national dance form functions as a sign of global modernity in these two different Asian contexts. The Japanese Bollywood dancers have developed a discourse that references and weights criteria such as heritage, source material, training and discipline, in-country experience, affect, imitation, cultural proficiency, emotion, and engagement as they rank themselves in relation to other dancers.

Becoming a body

ABSTRACT All dancing bodies are created and/or crafted; they are bodies that speak; and bodies that prepare to occupy public realms. These bodies are prepared and trained, either intentionally or unintentionally. There could be a differentiation of dancers on the basis of whether (s)he is a dancer by choice, by necessity, or by imposition. But whatever is the path for anyone to become a dancer, he or she first becomes a body during the time of the initiation process and then a dancer. This paper contextualizes these basic facts within the specific empirical examples of (1) dancers trained in a specific Indian dance form, largely considered a hobby or a leisure activity and (2) professional dancers, who have chosen or been forced to dance to earn a living. It also brings, in contrast, untrained women’s bodies that have created a history of choreographed protest events through acts of community dissent in public presence, as witnessed in the recent women’s protests all over India. Through a range of different relations with the concepts of labour, effort, deviance, dedication, precarity and resistance, the paper asserts that all bodies in public spaces are under scrutiny and none of the above categories escape that surveillance.

“From ‘Guru-mukha’ to Contemporaneity”: metamorphosing divergent trajectories of Mohiniyattam pedagogy and performativity

This article foregrounds the various modalities in which a South Indian feminine dance form, Mohiniyattam is taught and performed, and underscores its metamorphosis from an erotic practice to a significant art form. It traces the paradigm shift that Mohiniyattam underwent from its purist-traditionalist form to the present phase and the pedagogic changes that such a shift necessitated.

Bharatanatyam as a Transnational and Translocal Connection: A Study of Selected Indian and American Texts

Bharatanatyam is a classical dance form derived from ancient dance styles, which is now seen as representative of Indian culture. In India, it is the most popular classical dance form exerting a great impact not only on the field of dance itself, but also on other art forms, like sculpture or painting. The Indian-American diaspora practices it both in an attempt to preserve its culture and as an assertion of its cultural identity. Dance is an art form that relates to sequences of body movements that are simultaneously aesthetic and symbolic, and rooted in specific cultures. It often tells a story. Different cultures observe different norms and standards by which dances should be performed (as well as by whom they should be performed and on what occasions). At the same time, dance and dancers influence (and are influenced by) different cultures as a result of transcultural interactions. Priya Srinivasan’s Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor is a particularly valuable source wherein its author critically examines a variety of Indian dance forms, especially Bharatanatyam, tracing the history of dance as well as the lived experience of dancers across time, class, gender, and culture. With the help of this text, selected journal articles, and interviews with Bharatanatyam dancers in India and the US, I explore larger issues of gender, identity, culture, race, region, nation, and power dynamics inherent in the practice of Bharatanatyam, focusing on how these practices influence and, in turn, are influenced by transnational and translocal connections.

Balance in Bharatanatyam dancers and non-dancers: A comparative study

Background and Objective: Bharatanatyam is a classical Indian dance form that traces its roots to the 2nd century and is still one of the most popular and widely practised dance forms in India. It uses a lot of movements in different stances with superimposed limb movements. There may seem to be a logical link between balance and the practice of Bharatanatyam, but the paucity of research on this topic, especially concerned with Indian classical dance, thus prompted us to conduct the research to assess and have an objective measurement of comparison of balance between Bharatanatyam dancers and age- & gendermatched non-dancers. Materials and Methods: A sample size of 50 Bharatanatyam dancers and 50 age and gender-matched non-dancers were assessed on the Neuro-Com Balance system for 3 parameters- weight-bearing (at 0, 30, 60 and 90 degrees of knee flexion), unilateral stance and Limits of Stability. Results and Conclusion: Bharatanatyam dancers showed decreased sway velocity in unilateral stance compared to non-dancers. They also had quicker reaction times, higher movement velocity, better end-point and maximum excursion as well as higher directional control (in the Limits of Stability test) compared to the non-dancers. The acquired results prove that trained Bharatanatyam dancers have better balance than age- and gendermatched non-dancers. Keywords: Bharatanatyam, Balance, Dancers, Balance master, COG, Movement, Comparison.

The Philosophy and Practice of Indian Classical Dance-Changes and Challenges with Digital Humanities

Traditionally, Indian dance forms were taught through the Guru-Shishya system, where the student stays at the abode of the Guru to develop a strong foundation in the field. This enabled the Guru to nurture the disciple and prepare them to become experts in the vocation alongside all the important values that go with any system of knowledge in ancient Indian tradition. The unique features of Gurukul were deep love, respect and mutual communion. There are significant changes in the current world, where digitization is an unavoidable trend. An objective of this paper is to identify the aspects that are ‘modified’ and sometimes, lost in the process of digitizing Indian Classical dance. It would not be of any help to fight natural evolution and dismiss growth but care has to be taken, not to cut asunder the very purpose of the creation of an art which is to restore righteousness in the world through an aesthetic medium. The spiritual role that it plays in the world, needless to add, is indeed as an agent to kindle peace and friendship between people, beyond all barriers. It would be helpful if the potential attributes that are in threat of getting submerged through digitization, are identified by researchers and artists. For example, during dance training, the pure dance technique and structure can become translated to a satisfying extent as the basic emotional stance is that of vigour. On the other hand, the intense involvement in the expressional mode, the devotional ascent and the one to one transmission during actual presence of teacher and taught in close proximity, seems amiss

Gender and Ethnicity in Indian Classical Dance in Malaysia

Indian classical dances, such as bharata natyam and odissi , are represented by multiethnic dancers in Malaysia, with“star”dancers being predominantly men. Following a short historical genealogy of Indian dances in Malaysia, this paper focuses on Ramli Ibrahim, the world-renowned practitioner of odissi and bharata natyam and his first widely toured dance production, Spellbound Odissi Live! This paper examines how a Malay-Muslim male practitioner transcends ethnic and religious boundaries in an increasingly Islamic state to rise as one of the foremost advocates of classical Indian dance forms, namely odissi in Malaysia. An intersection between dance, gender, and ethnicity offer insights to the intriguing visibility of Indian dances in Malaysia, and its success at generating international presence and professional networks.

Bharatanatyam in New Zealand: A story of dance, diaspora and cultural change

Experiences of migration or diaspora has led to new predicaments for maintaining dance traditions (Ahmed, 2013; Brooks & Meglin, 2011). Current research is exploring how migrants learn to inhabit these new geo-political spaces. This paper will serve as a springboard for investigating how classical Indian dance forms such as Bharatanatyam plays a role in enhancing Indian identity in New Zealand. The study employs a combination of dance ethnography and autoethnography as methodologies for examining how this dance is being practiced in the South Pacific city of Dunedin.

Dancing in-between spaces: an auto-ethnographic exploration of an abhinaya class

The questions that this paper poses are placed at the intersection of a Liberal Arts approach to education and the pedagogy of traditional Indian dance forms. These questions are explored through my ongoing pedagogical experiment with teaching the art of abhinaya in the university classroom. This paper charts the journey of exploring what the technique of abhinaya means. How is it generated? Where does an individual find agency and voice within the discipline of a classical Indian dance form? Here abhinaya is generated through a toolbox of methods, which allows students to access their own perceptions and understandings and structure them in ways which can be communicated. Building upon their embodied knowledge, students create multiple layers of meaning, moving from the obvious depictions to abstract forms; a process that forms the bedrock of traditional abhinaya technique. Learning in the class is driven neither by the teacher nor the curriculum, but rather by the student. In its approach, this class cuts across disciplinary boundaries and creates new frictions and relations in the class. It challenges the authority of the teacher and redefines the relationship between the teacher and the taught and what constitutes legitimate knowledge in a given discipline.

Degrees of Separation: Lester Horton’s

This essay examines Lester Horton’s 1937 production of Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) at the Hollywood Bowl. In particular, the genesis of the work and the transference of Russian modernism in 1930s Los Angeles is explored. The essay focuses on Horton’s professional relationships with two artists in Los Angeles, Adolph Bolm and Michio Ito, both of whom were in his proximity as teachers, mentors and colleagues when he created Le Sacre. The Russian émigré Bolm, a former dancer with the Ballets Russes during the period Nijinsky choreographed The Rite of Spring in 1913, was a well-established teacher and choreographer in Los Angeles. Bolm’s and Horton’s parallel interests in American Indian dance forms are discussed. Ito, the Japanese dancer and choreographer who was inspired to pursue dance after witnessing performances of the Ballets Russes, trained in Dalcroze Eurhythmics in Hellerau before settling in Los Angeles in 1929. Horton’s production of Le Sacre, the seventh created internationally and first West Coast version is discussed in detail, drawing on the choreographer’s rehearsal notes and other first-hand accounts.

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.

The Signing System of Mudra in Traditional Indian Dance

Abstract Body language involving manual gestures of a highly stylized nature is used in traditional Indian dance forms. Termed “Mudras”, such gestures are related to but distinct from “Mudras” in Buddhist and/or Tantric iconography and in Carnatic music of Southern India. The Mudra signs in dance occur in families or classes, which often cut across the basic dichotomy between “combined-hand” and “separate-hand” gestures, and which reflect linguistic and sociolinguistic classes of words and signs, such as question expressions and hierarchically differentiated pronouns, used in the domain of language. However, the Mudra signing system is also combined with facial mime or acting illustrative of different feelings such as romantic love, mirth, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness, to yield a richly communicative and dynamic aesthetic in Indian dance forms.

Dancing and Listening: Odissi across Cultures

This paper discusses issues that arose for me when I interviewed an Odissi dancer about her learning this Indian dance form, travelling as she did from Australia to Orissa to spend several months of each year over an 11-year period to live with her guru, the late Sanjukta Panigrahi. The issues I discuss are the problems associated with making a text from a live encounter, and the choice of perspectives used in analysing that text. Drawing on discussions by ethnographers, anthropologists and others about the role of poetics in intercultural research, and on my own dance experience, I reflect on my ‘positioning’ in the various stages of the research. I go on to propose that the live, the temporal and what is remembered in the body are important, potentially poetic modalities of knowledge, which can easily be elided in academically validated ways of thinking and doing.

‘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.

Dancing the Divine Female: Diasporic Women's Encounters with the Hindu Goddess through Indian Classical Dance

Within the American diasporic context, the significance of the Hindu Goddess takes on new interpretative meanings for both Indian females and western feminists interested in the female divine; these women interact with the Goddess through an array of diverse practices and discourses, which in turn shape their own religious identities. This article observes the variety of perspectives on the Hindu Goddess across a broad spectrum of female practitioners, including western feminists, traditional Hindu women from India, and Hindu women living within the American diaspora. Furthermore, the article examines how Hindu diasporic women utilize the classical Indian dance forms of Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi to mold their religious identities, and to encounter Hinduism's divine female.

Techniques and Institutions: The Transformation of British Dance Tradition through South Asian Dance

In 1998, the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) created a South Asian Dance Faculty, expanding its range of dance styles for examination. The added imports of Bharatanatyam and Kathak are classical Indian dance forms which have transformed the face of British dance despite their relatively short history here. Inclusion of the new forms was initiated by Akādemi, a British South Asian dance organisation, with funding from the Arts Council of England. Delving beyond ISTD’s response to the increasing multi-cultural face of British society, the organisation’s expansion opens avenues of inquiry into the relationship between dance techniques and British institutions. Fundamental dichotomies arise in considering identity and tradition in relation to the location and function of South Asian dance in Britain. How does the addition of South Asian dance fit into the stated mission of the ISTD? And how does the ISTD fit into the South Asian dance community and the larger context of a mainstream arts community? Other relevant issues concern the extent to which classical South Asian dance forms are culturally specific and their modification to fit within an ISTD curriculum. Questions on the location and function of the art forms exist within broader fundamental debates centring on the definition of the term ‘British’ – whose version of identity is invoked by the name? And while definitive answers are still elusive, issues of agency arise in considering the transformation of British dance. Interviews with members of the ISTD South Asian Dance Faculty and research collected in the Leverhulme Trust South Asian Dance in Britain project are drawn on to examine the impact of South Asian dance on a British dance identity.