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Bharatanatyam
was a dance technique evolved in the South of India in Tamil Nadu
and practised in the Shiva temples. It is a highly specialised science with uses
a traditional background and rigid codes and conventions. Bharatanatyam skillfully
embodies the three primary aspects of dance. They are bhava or mood,
raga or music and melody and tala or timing. The technique
of Bharatanatyam consists of the hand, foot, face and body movements, which are
performed to the accompaniment of 64 principles of coordination. For many
centuries only certain families in the district of Thanjavur performed Bharatanatyam.
The inheritors of the craft were known as Nattuvans. The chief exponents
of this dance were the devadasis or temple dancers. They would
perform the dance daily at the time of worship or on festive occasions. It came
to be patronized by the rajahs and princes. In course of time the devadasis began
to dance in the courts and palaces and the sanctity of the dance was lost.
Bharatanatyam stands in the forefront of all the classical dance art forms
that are now prevalent in India. Owing to its religious origins and its highly developed
technique, it is the form of dance most akin to the code compiled by the sage Bharata
Muni in his famous Natya Shastra. The modern form of Bharatanatyam
presentation is the arrangements of four Nattuvans of Pandanallur who were
brothers. They were Ponniah, Chinniah, Vadivelu and Sivanandam, who lived in
the eighteenth century. The Vidwan, Meenaskshi Sundaram Pillai of Pandanallur, the
greatest teacher of Bharatanatyam is a direct descendant of these brothers.
It
was Rukmini Devi Arundale, the celebrated dancer and scholar who took this
dance form out of the temple and gave it new respectability. She started the
dance school Kalakshetra in Adyar. The school was later shifted to Thiruvanmiyur,
from where it now functions. Here the old, gurukulam system in education
is still followed and many classes are conducted in sylvan surroundings. In the
Nataraja temple or the temple of dancing Shiva at Chidambaram, the 108 poses of
the classical form of Bharatanatyam are sculpted on the pillars around the shrines
and on the gateways.
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