Dance Forms          Dance History

NATYA SASTRA... Theatre art has played a dominant role in India and entire Asia for more than 2000 years. In the field of performing arts, the grammatical foundation was laid down by 'Bharatamuni' in his 'NATYA SASTRA' and this encyclopedic work in sanskrit dates back to 5th century B.C. Natya Sastra is the very sub-stratum of the artistic living tradition of our Bharatavarsha(india).This work that runs upto 36 chapters has influenced the allied arts of painting, sculpture and poetics and has been the common basis for classical tradition in music, dance, drama, poetics and iconography for the entire Europe, Asia and more so for Bharatavarsha(india).

A work which had influenced Aristotle and hence the Greek Drama, that which has inspired the Chinese Theatre, the Japanese performing arts, or even the theatre of far east,came to be forgotten by Indians of the North from the twelfth century and those of the South after the fourteenth century due to political, religious, sociological, and economic causes.

MAARGI AND DESI... Studying and following the path shown by Sage Bharata was called "Maargi" meaning classical. This common Maargi style in music, dance and drama co-existed with the respective regional styles called "Desi". This can be compared with the Sanskrit language, having co-existed as lingua franca in India along with respective regional Praakrith languages and dialects of various regions until a hundred years ago.

DESI FORMS... The post independance India has fortunately revived and revitalised many of the Desi forms of dance and Theatrical tradition such as Bharatanatyam of Tamizh nadu (which used to be called "Sadir" till about fifty years ago), Kathakali of Kerala, Manipuri of Manipur, Odissi of Orissa, Kathak of the north and many others. Unfortunately the "Margi" or the common classical tradition which was like the very root of this great banyan tree of Indian perfoming arts has become obsolete and can be revived only through an in-depth study of the Natya Sastra.

Dr.Padma Subrahmanyam (my dance guru) has been one of the pioneers in re-discovering this encyclopedic work and has reconstructed the entire dance technique for practice based on the Natya Sastra to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

NATYA SASTRA AND NATIONAL UNITY... The Nationalism and to some extent, Internationalism, met within the Natyasastra, is just not an artificial cementing of diversities or mixing up of styles; it is not even an exaggeration of the glory of the past; it is not a mere integration of heterogenous cultures, but a monumental living proof of a time immemorial "Unity in Variety" and not even "Unity in Diversity".