The Lord of
Indian dances, including Bharatanatyam,- Nataraja- is the personification
of the Indian philosophy of Eternal Time. Nataraja personifies the kinetic
aspect of divinity, the unseen spectacle of birth and death, the dynamic
disintegration and renewal of all cosmic matter in every second of Time.
“He rises from
his stillness, and, dancing, sends through matter pulsing waves of awakening
sound, proceeding from his drum. Then in the fullness of time, still dancing,
He destroys all Names and Forms by Fire, and there is new Rest.”
A dedicatory
dance, Bharatanatyam is considered a divine art to be celebrated, beyond
the rapture of the body, for the purification of the spirit. A Bharatanatyam
dancer dissolves her identity in rhythm and music, and makes her body an
instrument for experience of the soul.
Sculptural evidence asserts that Bharatanatyam can be traced back to the fifth Century A.D. After the 10th Century, Bharatanatyam seems to have developed chiefly in South India and gradually came to be restricted to the area, what is now known as the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Technical illustrations of dance movements can be found in various prominent temples of Tamil
Nadu that date as far back as 14th century A.D.
In its present
form, Bharatanatyam is about two hundred years old, its thematic and musical
content being given to it by the musicians of the royal courts of the 18th-19th
centuries. |