Classical & Folk Dances

Dance in India was never meant to be just movement. It was a language, a way of telling a story to the gods and to the people without a single spoken word. The oldest rulebook of that language is the Natya Shastra, written by Bharata Muni (traditionally dated between about 200 BCE and 200 CE). It covers drama, dance, music, make-up, costume and even the design of the stage, in about 36 chapters, and almost every classical dance of India traces its grammar back to it.

Legend says Brahma created the Natyaveda, a 'fifth Veda' that anyone could learn. He took the words (pathya) from the Rigveda, the music (gita) from the Samaveda, the expression (abhinaya) from the Yajurveda and the emotional flavour (rasa) from the Atharvaveda. That is why dance in India joins four things: word, music, expression and feeling.

Bharata's Natya Shastra lists eight rasas. Shanta (peace) is counted as the ninth by later thinkers, which is why we now speak of the Navarasa (nine rasas). Kathakali, with its rich facial acting, is the dance most often linked with the Navarasas in exam questions.

Mudras are the hand gestures that act as the vocabulary of dance. They fall in two groups: Asamyuta (single-hand) and Samyuta (double-hand). The best known source for them is the Abhinaya Darpana by Nandikeshvara, a text especially important for Bharatanatyam. Kathakali follows a separate text on hand gestures, the Hastalakshana Deepika.

Now the big list. The Sangeet Natak Akademi (set up in 1953 in New Delhi, India's national academy for music, dance and drama) recognises eight classical dances. Sattriya of Assam was the last to join, in the year 2000. Learn the list as two groups: four from the South and West-coast (Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam) and four from the North and East (Kathak, Odissi, Manipuri, Sattriya).

The four classical dances of the South and the Malabar coast grew in temples and royal courts and are danced to Carnatic music. They share the same grammar of mudra, rasa and abhinaya, but each has its own personality. Think of them as four sisters: Bharatanatyam is the geometric one, Kuchipudi the playful storyteller, Kathakali the warrior in make-up and Mohiniyattam the soft dreamer.

Bharatanatyam has a fixed order of items called the Margam. A recital moves from pure rhythm to expression and ends in a joyful finish. Remember the order: Alarippu (opening, 'offering of the flower'), Jatiswaram, Shabdam, Varnam (the centrepiece, both rhythm and story), Padam and Javali (love and devotion, soft items), Tillana (fast, rhythmic finale) and Shlokam/Mangalam (closing blessing).

Kathakali make-up tells you the character before the actor moves. Pacha (green) is for noble heroes such as Rama, Krishna and Arjuna. Kathi (knife-shaped paint over green) marks proud, arrogant villains. Thadi means beard: red for evil, white for divine beings such as Hanuman, black for hunters and forest folk. Kari (black) shows demonesses; Minukku (soft, yellow-orange) is for women and sages. Music comes from the chenda and maddalam drums with the ilathalam (cymbals); the actors use about 24 basic mudras.

The four classical dances of the North and East tell a different story from the southern group. Kathak came up from the storytellers of the Gangetic plains and then met the Mughal court. Odissi was carved on temple walls long before it was written down. Manipuri is soft, circular and devotional, the dance of Radha and Krishna in the hills. Sattriya was born inside the monasteries of Assam, and was recognised only in 2000.

Kathak has two major roots: the temple storytellers and the Mughal court dance. That is why it is the one classical dance where Hindu (Radha-Krishna, Ramayana) and Persian (Mughal courtly) elements sit together, and why the dancer's costume may be a lehenga or an anarkali-churidar. A Kathak recital builds from a salutation (Amad, Salami) to pure rhythm (Tatkar, Tukra, Paran, Tihai) and ends with expression (Thumri, Bhajan, Ghazal). It is the classical dance that goes with Hindustani music.

Odissi is among the oldest surviving classical dances. Sculptures in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves (near Bhubaneswar), the Konark Sun Temple and the Jagannath Temple show its poses. It grew from three streams: the Maharis (temple dancers of Puri, who danced inside the sanctum), the Gotipuas (boys dressed as girls, who danced outside the temple and are the precursor of today's Odissi) and the Nartakis (court dancers). Its signature is the Tribhanga, a pose with three bends at head, torso and hip, and the Chowk, a strong square stance with knees bent.

Manipuri is the dance of the hill state. Its oldest layer is the ritual of Lai Haraoba ('merrymaking of the gods'), and the Vaishnava layer came when Hinduism reached Manipur. King Bhagyachandra (18th century) is credited with composing the Raslila. The women's costume has the stiff, barrel-shaped Kumil skirt, and the men play the Pung drum. Eyes are lowered, steps are gentle and hand movements flow, which is why it counts as Lasya.

Sattriya was introduced by the saint-reformer Sankardev (15th-16th century), who spread Ekasarana Vaishnavism in Assam. He wrote one-act plays called Ankiya Nat (performed as Bhaona), and the dance in them was kept alive for centuries by monks (bhokots) in the sattras, the Vaishnava monasteries, especially in Majuli. It has two styles, the male Paurashik Bhangi and female Stri Bhangi, and its songs are the Borgeet composed by Sankardev and Madhavdev. The Sangeet Natak Akademi recognised it in 2000.

Folk dances are the dances of ordinary people: farmers at harvest, women at festivals, fishermen on the shore. They are not taught through a fixed text like the classical dances; they are passed from one generation to the next, and each region has its own. For exams, the golden rule is to tie each dance to its state and to one fact: a festival, a community, a prop or an instrument.

Here is the state-wise table. Read it row by row, with the state in front of you, and cover the dance column when you revise.

Some dances are not entertainment at all. They are a prayer, a battle drill or the memory of a victory. Tribal dances belong to a community and mark a season, a birth, a harvest or a hunt. Martial dances keep the moves of warriors alive. Ritual and mask dances call a god or a spirit into the body of the dancer. This topic collects all three, because examiners love asking about them through 'which tribe', 'which state' and 'what is it for'.

Chhau is the best-known martial-tribal dance of eastern India. It has three styles, named after their homes: Seraikela Chhau (Jharkhand, with masks), Purulia Chhau (West Bengal, with large masks) and Mayurbhanj Chhau (Odisha, without masks). The dancer's body is the story: leaps, mock fights and animal movements show scenes from the epics. Chhau was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2010, and it is not one of the eight classical dances.

Cham is the masked dance of Tibetan Buddhist monks, performed in monasteries of Ladakh, Sikkim, Himachal and Arunachal. Dancers in grand costumes and masks act out the victory of good over evil, and the guardian figures of the faith appear in them. The Hemis monastery in Ladakh is the best-known site, where the annual Hemis festival honours Guru Padmasambhava. Theyyam (North Malabar, Kerala) and Bhuta Kola (Tulu Nadu, coastal Karnataka) are ritual dances in which the performer becomes the deity or the spirit; Theyyam is also called Kaliyattam.

Behind every dance tradition stand gurus and dancers who kept it alive when it was nearly lost. Many of today's classical dances were rescued in the 20th century: Bharatanatyam from the temple-dancer stigma, Kathakali and Mohiniyattam from decline in Kerala, Odissi from the memory of a few Maharis. This is why exam questions on 'famous exponents' are really questions on who revived what. Learn the table below as a map: one dance, three or four names.

Awards for dance, briefly. The Sangeet Natak Akademi (set up in 1953) gives the highest national honours in performing arts: the Akademi Award (Puraskar) for artists in music, dance and drama, and its highest honour, the Akademi Fellowship (Akademi Ratna). The government's Padma awards also honour dancers; for example, Rukmini Devi Arundale was a Padma Bhushan awardee. Detailed lists of national awards sit in the Awards chapter, so here just remember that the Akademi is the body to link with dance, music and drama.