Bharatanatyam

Please use the Scroll Bar

Bharatanatyam
One of the classical dances of India, Bharatanatyam could well be the oldest classical dance form. Bharatanatyam comes to us in the 21^st century with a sense of surrealistic splendour and dazzling dynamics. The dance has close linkages with old sculpture and paintings and with ancient texts, which give it a quite authority without impinging on the expansive creative spaces it needs. The dance embraces the most abstract and evolved concepts of human thought – enunciated in poetry, arranged to melody and framed in the perimeter of rhythm. Visually it moves between the stillness of stylized lines and the voluptuous volumes of sculptures from the southern areas, which fall in the modern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Its concerns depict our times, trials and tribulations. It has moved from only myth and mildness to issue and arguments reflective of an organic process. Rooted in pristine Indianness, Bharatanatyam is qualified by the spirit of the sacred and celebrates the values that are intrinsic and eternal to the Indian civilization. Like the history of the civilization or the rivers that nurtured them, the dance form flows through the ages.