About Bharata Natyam
Born centuries ago in the temples of India, Bharata Natyam is an earthy, dynamic and highly complicated art of solo feminine dancing. The contemporary form of Bharata Natyam evolved during the late 18th or early 19th century. It is an extremely precise dance style where a huge repertoire of hand movements is used to convey moods and expressions. There are three main aspects of the dance: Nritta, consisting of movements and patterns of dance; Nritya, the narrative or emotional aspect of dance; and Natya, which adds an element of drama to the composition.
The Origin of Bharata Natyam
Dance is one of India's oldest legacies -- the Natyashastra, an exhaustive
dramaturgical treatise, is over two thousand years old. Legend has it
that the Gods were bored and were in search of a different form of entertainment.
Bharata, a scholar, codified the art of dance, taking the best of the
four sacred Vedas, to appeal to a higher aesthetic sense, and created
a fifth text called Natya Shastra. The art of Bharata natyam is based
on the Natya Shastra.l Myth apart, dance for the Indian is divine art.
Temple sculptures abound in figures portraying deities like Shiva, Vishnu,
Kartikeya, Krishna, Ganesa, Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati in attitudes
of dance. For the human being, dance is both a joy and a form of worship,
dedicated, as it is, to the Gods. In fact, the devotional attitude is
common to all ancient Indian art, be it sculpture, painting, music or
dance, as the art forms drew their content from mythology.
Myth apart, dance for the Indian is divine art. Temple sculptures abound in figures portraying deities like Shiva, Vishnu, Kartikeya, Krishna, Ganesa, Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati in attitudes of dance. For the human being, dance is both a joy and a form of worship, dedicated, as it is, to the Gods. In fact, the devotional attitude is common to all ancient Indian art, be it sculpture, painting, music or dance, as the art forms drew their content from mythology.
Both ancient sculpture and literature, as well as old palm-leaf manuscripts, establish that Bharata Natyam has had a very long history. It was nurtured in the South of India, where the roots of music and dance go back about 2,500 years. The Tamil epics of 200 B.C. give detailed references to various musical instruments and mention different technical terms describing music and dance, both very popular at the time. A more or less uniform style of dance perhaps existed all over India until about the 5th century A.D. after which regional influences became powerful, with each area specializing in it's own art forms.
After the Chola dynasty came the Pandyas and Vijayangar kings, followed
by the Nayaks of Tanjore (Thanjavur) and finally the Marathas, all of whom
gave dance and music, both in the temple and in the court, special encouragement.
Some of the kings themselves were great writers and composers of art and
all of them erected large temples where art flourished.
During the rule of the Marathas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
four famous brothers, Chinnaiyya, Ponnaiyya, Sivanandam and Vadivelu, lived in
South India. The brothers, who were musicians, dancers and poets (composers),
later came to be called the Tanjore Quartette. They were disciples of the famous
music composer Muthuswamy Dikshitar and were responsible for giving Bharata Natyam
the form and content it has today. Even now a major part of the repertoire of
the dance comes from what the brothers created.