Bharatanatyam

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.