Both abstract and expressive, bharata natyam thrives as a living tradition

By Kalpana Mohan

On any given weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area, Indian-American parents are herding their young children (most often their daughters) to bharata natyam lessons. The oldest of several classical Indian dance forms, bharata natyam originated in southern India thousands of years ago as a temple dance.

Bharata natyam is “much more than just dance,” says Rasika Kumar, a second-generation Indian-American dancer. (Photo by Bipin Thakkar)

Vidhya Subramanian, a bharata natyam dance teacher and artistic director of Cupertino-based Lasya Dance Company, runs classes in a remodeled garage with mirrored walls and wooden flooring. Inside this light and airy space, her students stomp and jump to the sharp beat of a stick (mannai) on a wooden block (thattukuzhi).

Like many other bharata natyam teachers (typically called gurus) who immigrated from India, Subramanian works hard at getting her students to approach this ancient art form as honestly as possible. For that, she insists on a few house rules. “I establish ground rules at the outset in terms of clothing, wearing of the pottu [a dot, also called bindi] on the forehead, and showing respect for what is being taught when they attend classes.”

Subramanian’s expectations are not unseemly. To achieve the proficiency to perform as a soloist in this tradition requires at least a decade of practice, persistence, and passion.

Bharata natyam is “much more than just dance,” says Rasika Kumar, a second-generation Indian-American dancer. “You have to learn about the classical music you dance to, understand the meaning of the lyrics, appreciate the many ragas [melodies], grasp the different talas [rhythms], imbibe stories about the Hindu pantheon of gods, and know Indian customs, traditions, and history. So the learning of bharata natyam is a vehicle to learn all these things as well,” she says.

Kumar learned the art in the cradle from her guru and mother, Mythili Kumar, who established Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose in 1980. Like Rasika Kumar, many Indian-American girls born and raised outside India are fascinated by the 2,000-year-old art form that originated in the stone-carved Hindu temples of South India. Nurtured in the temples and palace courts and handed down as a living tradition, bharata natyam was documented as a performing art in the 19th century by the Tanjore Quartet, a four-brother ensemble whose musical compositions form the bulk of its repertoire even in this century. 

From frieze to stage
Walk down a lane in any city in South India on a given evening and you are bound to hear the beat of the bell-clad feet of girls dressed in cotton kameez (tunic) and salwar (pant) ensembles, sashes tied tightly around the waist. In the dusty alleys of South Indian towns and villages, your senses will be assaulted by the cacophony of daily life—the moo of cows, the bleat of goats, the honk of a roaring auto-rickshaw, the mindless ringing of bicycle bells, and the babel of languages and insults. But one sound will stop, still, and steal your mind: the peal of the temple bell.

In most towns, the oldest temple is typically at least 1,000 years old. Life hobbles around these temples even today. The temple of Chidambaram, built in the fifth century AD, is the temple of the dancing Hindu god Shiva. The 1,000-year-old friezes in the temple’s eastern tower—with their enumeration of the 108 poses of Indian classical dance—inspire and inform the art of bharata natyam even today.

Bharata natyam is the oldest and most stylistically developed of the Indian classical dance forms. In roughly 200 BC (dates vary), Bharata Muni, a musicologist, compiled the principles of bharata natyam in the Nātyasāstra, an ancient work of dramatic theory. The name “bharata natyam” describes the basic concepts: bhava (expression), raga (music), tala (rhythm), and natyam (dance). For centuries, this dance was performed only in temples by devadasis, women whose job was to serve the deity inside the temple and also please rich patrons of the temple, using their artistic talent and sensuality.

In the early part of the 20th century, bharata natyam became purged of most erotic leanings by educated women born into wealth. Barely 50 years have passed since this art form became accepted in the mainstream of Indian life, yet today it is a rite of passage for many young girls raised in the South Indian milieu. For those raised abroad, learning bharata natyam offers a route to learn about their roots.

Learning bharata natyam
Bharata natyam has two kinds of movement—abstract (nritta) and expressive (nritya). Learning bharata natyam begins with several years of mastering a group of basic routines (each routine is called an adavu). Each adavu is a combination of steps or positions with coordinated movements of the feet, legs, hands and arms, along with specific movements also of the torso, head, and eyes.

In teaching the initial stages of her art, Vidhya Subramanian focuses on precision of technique and posture. In bharata natyam, the basic position is the araimandi, the “half-sit” position in which the dancer stands with feet together, knees bent and pointing outward, and tailbone as close to the ground as possible, compressing herself to at least three-fourths of her original height. Difficult, you think? Try dancing in this position for half an hour. The araimandi gives the typical triangular shape and stability to bharata natyam. The best araimandi posture also exploits the beauty of the “fan” in the heavy silk costumes that dancers wear onstage (see sidebar).

Seventeen-year-old Madhulika Krishnan of Sunnyvale, California, who recently finished her solo dance debut (called an arangetram, which means “ascending the stage”) under guru Vidhya Subramanian, remembers her early struggles in quest of a good araimandi. Her teacher’s commands in class—“sit more,” “knees out,” “feet out,” “fingers stiff,” and “hips in”—are burned into her brain.

“Western dancers can greatly benefit from bharata natyam by learning how to stamp to specific rhythms and become more in tune with the earth they dance on.” —Vidhya Subramanian

After teaching the basic abstract segments of dance and theory, Subramanian leads her students into expressional pieces involving mime. “Abhinaya, or expression, in Sanskrit, is the art of carrying forward a thought, expression, or emotion,” Subramanian explains, “and abhinaya is what differentiates Indian classical dance forms from other world dance forms because it involves stylized facial expressions combined with codified hand gestures.”

Dancers in the bharata natyam tradition agree that dancers in Western systems would find master lessons in abhinaya useful. “From what I know of Western dance forms, I believe that the art of expression is taught much later, and at an individual level. It’s not a structured thing from early on,” Kumar says. “In bharata natyam, there is a lot of teaching behind the basic emotions. As a dancer, the more you are aware, the more you end up doing some soul-searching in the process.”

What students of bharata natyam also will tell you is how much stamina (mental and physical) this kind of dancing requires both on- and offstage. It’s compounded, of course, by the fact that the dancer is bedecked in fine silk and heavy jewelry and standing under the heat of the lights. The dance form also includes a lot of jumps, pirouettes, and positions where the knees contact the floor.

An exquisite feature of bharata natyam is the rhythmic movement of the eyes, which complements and highlights the movements of the body in both abstract and expressional dance segments. The creative use of the eye enhances abhinaya and makes the audience connect with the dancer.

Krishnan, a talented stage actress, finds abhinaya more challenging than theater. “Abhinaya is conveying expression through your eyes, your face, and your hands. To communicate with just an expression and no words is way more difficult than one can imagine.”

While teaching the emotional response to a song and its lyrics, Subramanian starts with a simple expressive piece. As students progress, the songs become more complicated both in melody and rhythm and challenge the students with greater expressional demands. She makes her students write down the song lyrics (typically in the South Indian languages of Tamil or Telugu, or in archaic Sanskrit) and their meaning. “This is the first step to understanding how to even begin the process of emoting,” she says. Then she expounds on each line, exploring choreographic variations for the same lyrics. She says this is one way to nudge dancers into introspection and groom them to become good choreographers.

Ancient vs. contemporary
Bharata natyam may be an ancient art form, yet the choreographers who work in this medium are tuning it in surprising ways to talk about the problems, big and small, of modern life. The Internet and social networking tools are propagating bharata natyam’s message faster than any organization or person in creating a following.

“With YouTube and Facebook, I’ve watched the work of artists and schools that I never knew existed,” Kumar says. Some bharata natyam dancers are getting attention in the mainstream because they employ their classical skills creatively to address contemporary problems.

In a program titled “Navarasa: Her Choice,” Subramanian turned the spotlight on the present suffering of women in various parts of the world while addressing similar challenges of women in Indian history and mythology. Likewise, as a fund-raiser for Japanese tsunami victims, Kumar presented dances that showed the resilience of the Japanese in the midst of hardship and chaos. These dancers are also applying innovative concepts from modern dance and theater to serve bharata natyam.

Subramanian says that her training in modern dance and theater gave her a great sense of the use of space and the optimal use of muscles in the body. But she also believes that the low-level movements and polyrhythms in bharata natyam provide groundedness to any dancer. “Western dancers can greatly benefit from bharata natyam by learning how to stamp to specific rhythms and become more in tune with the earth they dance on,” she says.

Every dance form provides the opportunity for exercise, stress relief, joy, and a deep sense of accomplishment. But bharata natyam, according to Subramanian, offers something deeper. It harks back to another era and another sensibility, examining the lives of gods as well as mortals and making sense of their struggles while keeping us in awe of the mysteries of the universe.

It is, ultimately, a form of meditation because of its ties to spirituality. “For the serious student,” she says, “bharata natyam offers spiritual bliss and solace.”

A Spotlight on Performance
Before a dance lesson, practice, or recital, it is traditional for bharata natyam dancers to make obeisance to the gods, the earth, and teacher or “guru.” According to Indian tradition, a guru is as important to a child as her parents—and most children who learn the classical arts are tied to their teacher for life.

A bharata natyam recital always begins with an invocation, an offering of prayers to Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed god who is the remover of obstacles, and Lord Nataraja, the god of dance.

A traditional solo bharata natyam recital has a specific structure. A progression of technique-laden abstract dance pieces lead up to the main piece, which is always a varnam, an intricate combination of both nritta and nritya. The varnam is followed by pieces that showcase expression and emotion. At the end comes the thillana, a montage of alluring and statuesque poses and exquisite patterns of movement that evoke sculptures in old Hindu temples.

Most recitals are supported by a live orchestra of vocalist, the veena (a plucked string instrument dating back 4,000 years), flute, violin, and mridangam (a two-headed leather drum).

Costumes, called saris, are made of Kanchipuram silk or silk cotton. Although a costume is fashioned from a sari, it is not the typical six-yard garment but several pieces sewn for easy movement. Most costumes involve pleated pieces at the waist that fan out during various poses. The dancers also wear elaborate jewelry (often called “temple” jewelry), including bangles, rings, earrings, nose rings, and special ornaments for the arms and head. The key part of the costume is a string of ankle bells (called salangai in the Tamil language) that highlights the rhythmic footwork of the dancer and is blessed by the dancer’s guru before a performance.

The facial makeup in bharata natyam is unique. The eyebrows are darkened and extended outward. The hands and feet are adorned with red dye to emphasize their movements.

Resources
In the San Francisco Bay Area, South Indian Fine Arts hosts touring bharata natyam danseuses from India: southindiafinearts.org.

To learn more about how bharata natyam entered the mainstream, read about Rukmini Arundale (the most important revivalist of bharata natyam, who elevated it to an art form demanding scholarship and skill) and T. Balasaraswati (a seventh-generation representative of the devadasi community) at rangashree.org/bharatanatyam.html.

To see bharata natyam performances in India today, see the following links and search for these dancers on YouTube:
Alarmel Valli: alarmelvalli.org
Priyadarsini Govind: priyadarsinigovind.net/
Urmila Sathyanarayana: urmila.in/