The tarangam, in which the dancer performs on the rim of a brass plate, is an item of which classical dance?

Bharatanatyam grew in the temples of Tamil Nadu, where it was performed by devadasis under the older name sadir or dasiattam, and it was brought to the concert stage in the twentieth century by E. Krishna Iyer and Rukmini Devi Arundale, who founded Kalakshetra at Madras in 1936.

The name means story-play, and the form stages episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Its characters are identified by make-up types, chiefly pacha for noble heroes, kathi for proud anti-heroes such as Ravana, thadi for fierce figures, kari for demonesses and minukku for gentle women and sages.

The Natya Shastra is the Sanskrit treatise that lays down the grammar every classical form follows, dividing performance into nritta, nritya and natya, naming the four kinds of abhinaya, and describing the rasas.

Sattriya of Assam was the eighth and last form to enter the Akademi list, and that single date is the fact papers ask most often about it.

It began with the kathakars, the story-tellers who narrated the epics in north Indian temples, and under Mughal patronage it moved into the court, took on Persian costume and turned towards abstract rhythm.