Classical Dances of India: Eight Forms, States and Gurus

Indian classical dance is the oldest continuously performed art of the subcontinent, and every major examination asks at least one question from it. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's national academy for music, dance and drama, recognises eight classical dance forms: Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam and Sattriya. Sattriya was the last to be added, in the year 2000. These notes take each form in turn and fix the one detail a paper setter is most likely to test.

The Natya Shastra: the grammar of the classical forms

Every classical form traces its rules to the Natya Shastra, a Sanskrit treatise on drama, dance and music attributed to Bharata Muni. It is often called the fifth Veda because it is said to draw speech from the Rigveda, song from the Samaveda, gesture from the Yajurveda and emotion from the Atharvaveda. The text divides performance into three strands: nritta, pure dance valued for its rhythm and line; nritya, dance that carries meaning through gesture; and natya, full dramatic enactment. It names four kinds of abhinaya, or expression, which are angika through the limbs, vachika through speech and song, aharya through costume and make-up, and sattvika through inner emotion. It describes eight rasas, to which a ninth, shanta, was added later. A companion text, the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikeshvara, catalogues the hand gestures, the mudras or hastas, that make up a dancer's vocabulary. Learn these terms, because questions are set directly on them.

The eight classical dances at a glance

The southern forms

Bharatanatyam comes from Tamil Nadu and was performed in temples by devadasis under the older name sadir or dasiattam. It is an ekaharya form, which means one dancer plays every character in the story. The half-sitting araimandi position and the straight, geometric lines of the limbs give it its look, and its blazing energy is why it is nicknamed the fire dance. A recital follows a fixed order: alarippu, jatiswaram, shabdam, varnam, padam and tillana. E. Krishna Iyer campaigned for its respectability, and Rukmini Devi Arundale carried it from the temple to the concert stage, founding Kalakshetra at Madras in 1936. T. Balasaraswati, Yamini Krishnamurthy and Padma Subrahmanyam belong to the same line.

Kuchipudi takes its name from a village in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh. The saint-poet Siddhendra Yogi shaped it into a dance-drama and composed the Bhama Kalapam, and its performers were traditionally Brahmin men who spoke as well as danced. Its signature item is the tarangam, in which the dancer balances on the rim of a brass plate, often with a pot of water on the head. Vempati Chinna Satyam, Raja and Radha Reddy and Swapnasundari are its best known names.

Kerala gives two forms. Kathakali, literally story-play, is a male-dominated dance-drama that grew out of Ramanattam and Krishnanattam and stages episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Its characters are typed by make-up: pacha, a green face, for noble heroes; kathi, the knife, for proud anti-heroes such as Ravana; thadi, the beard, for fierce figures; kari, black, for demonesses; and minukku for gentle women and sages. Mohiniyattam, the dance of the enchantress, is its opposite, a solo and feminine lasya form whose swaying movement is compared to a coconut palm and whose costume is the white kasavu sari with a gold border. The poet Vallathol Narayana Menon, who founded Kerala Kalamandalam in 1930, revived both.

The northern and eastern forms

Kathak is the only classical form shaped in equal measure by temple and court. Its name comes from the kathakars, the story-tellers who narrated the epics in north Indian temples; under Mughal patronage it moved indoors, took on Persian costume and turned towards abstract rhythm. It is danced upright, with rapid chakkars or pirouettes, intricate footwork measured against the tabla, and heavy ankle bells. Its gharanas are Lucknow, Jaipur and Banaras, with Raigarh sometimes counted a fourth. Bindadin Maharaj, Sitara Devi and Birju Maharaj belong to its line.

Odissi, from Odisha, is held to be the oldest surviving form on the strength of dance figures carved in the Udayagiri caves near Bhubaneswar. It was carried by the maharis, the temple women of the Jagannath shrine at Puri, and later by the gotipuas, boys dressed as girls. Its two basic stances are the square chowk and the three-bent tribhanga, and its favourite text is Jayadeva's Gita Govinda. Kelucharan Mohapatra, Sanjukta Panigrahi and Sonal Mansingh are its famous names, and Protima Bedi founded the Nrityagram dance village near Bengaluru.

Manipuri, from Manipur, is the gentlest of the eight. Its central theme is the Raas Leela of Radha and Krishna; the feet land softly, the face stays serene rather than expressive, and the dancer wears the stiff, barrel-shaped kumil skirt. The pung, a barrel drum, is played and danced with at once in the pung cholom, and the older ritual form of the region is the Lai Haraoba. Rabindranath Tagore brought Manipuri teachers to Santiniketan and made the form known across India.

Sattriya is the youngest entrant. It was created in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the Vaishnava saint Srimanta Sankardeva and preserved by celibate monks in the sattras, the monasteries of Assam, as part of the Ankiya Naat plays staged in the namghar. The Sangeet Natak Akademi recognised it as a classical form in 2000, which is the single fact most often asked about it.