Article - Gaudiya Nritya: Analyzation on the subjects of debate - Adrita Misra

Gaudiya Nritya, at present is among the most debated dance forms of India which are yet to be considered strictly 'classical'. Despite covering the technical criteria of a classical dance form, Gaudiya Nritya faces strong criticism and opposition due to several reasons which we attempt to address and analyze here.

Gaudiya Nritya was denied the recognition based on various reasons... 

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Of Chinna Nadam and periya talents! - Dance Matters: Column by Ashish Mohan Khokar

Nartanam Academy of Dance and Music (NADAM) is among Bangalore's best Kathak and Bharatanatyam teaching and performing society. Coconut is a fruit of which no part is wasted! Tender water, add protein rich fruit, even the shell makes Fab India buttons now! Then there's coir mat, rope, carpets, beds and more. Add the tree itself... Dancing in the winds when you see it! That's why NADAM is aptly located on Coconut Street! In where else? Centre of Bangalore's traditional culture - Malleswaram, the other bastion being Basavangudi. R.K. Narayan's famous book that Shankar Nag and wife Arundhati Nag made into a beautiful DD teleserial - Malgudi Days - partakes of these two wor(ld)ds Mal - (from Malleswaram) and Gudi from Basavangudi. Great ideas are simple; clutter leads to confusion. Or Confucius!

Confucius sounding, read 'sorted,' are NADAM founders Murali Mohan Kalvakalva and Nandini Mehta. Stable, sensible and solid, both have trained many, performed much and steered 25 years of Bangalore's best dance festival, nay, two festivals - Chinna Nadam for children under 13 and Periya Nadam for grown up talents in December.

It's a sheer delight to watch the young ones, all dolled up like - dolls!  

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Bharatanatyam and Neuroscience for Creative Aging - Sloka Iyengar - Not just anyBODY: a health and fitness column

I came to creative aging a few years ago through neuroscience and a series of losses in my family. Growing up in Ahmedabad, I learned Bharatanatyam at the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. My doctoral and postdoctoral work has been in neuroscience, more specifically in epilepsy; my clinical experience was with children who have refractory epilepsies. After my postdoctoral appointment, I lost my mother, mother-in-law, and a close older friend. Seeing formerly vibrant women being treated with pity and condescension when they were sick and frail, I was moved to think of ways to use my scientific and dance training to alleviate suffering, especially in older adults. I wanted to see if I could use Bharatanatyam as a vessel to provide a space where older adults can exercise their full human potential.

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Book Review - Kathak and Sanskritisation? - Leela Venkataraman

At the IIC, it was an evening with a scholarly gathering to mark the release of the book by Shubhi Publications on Speaking Sculptures - Karanas in Kathak, authored by Kathak specialist Shovana Narayan.

The Natya Sastra Karanas (Hasta-pada samayogah karanamiti samjnitam), we know, are not stances, but units of movement in a coordinated conjunction of hands and feet operating in a prescribed fashion. Shovana (as other scholars), understandably looks at sculpture as the best indicator of dance movement in history. One must remember however, that the Karana is a whole unit of movement - which has been arrested at any one point of a whole movement cycle, to be captured on temple walls by the sculptor's chisel. In other words, sculptural representations comprise frozen moments of whole units of movement prescribed as a Karana. And what is caught on stone arrested at any point -and what is seen in sculpture may not necessarily show the start or the culmination. 

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Mixed week of folk and stylised traditions - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Treated generally to tailored, stylized fare of classical music and dance, the audience at the IIC auditorium, Delhi, seemed to get caught on the wrong foot, with the very different texture of the no-holds-barred exuberance, very much in the old Mujra style of the Lavani and Jogwa dancers from Maharashtra (performance courtesy NCZCC and Culture Ministry). Originating during 18th -19tth century Maharashtra under the Peshwas, who were great patrons of this art form, as a means of morale boosting entertainment for soldiers, Lavani  performers are mostly from among the community of Dangars (shepherds) of the Sholapur region of Maharashtra, their art a provocative blend of storytelling, dance and music, brimful of socio-political satire, built round society, religion and politics....

At the Habitat Centre’s Stein auditorium, watching the poised Bharatanatyam in the Tanjore Bani presented by Sneha Mahesh, trained under dancer Priya Murle of Chennai, one was surprised that this dancer had never before performed in Delhi. Entering the starkly bare stage, her curtain-raiser was a Muthuswamy Dikshitar composition Ananda Nadana Prakasham in raga Kedaram, one of the panchabhuta sthala kritis dedicated to Lord Shiva as the embodiment of space or akash in the Nataraja temple. Brilliant as innumerable suns, the Lord as granter of worldly pleasures and liberation, reveals himself with his dancing feet, to sages Patanjali and Vyagrapada.....

With a capital in siege for a week, understandably lean audiences at the Habitat Stein auditorium greeted both the Bharatanatyam and Pravat Kumar Swain’s group Odissi Nrutya Arpana. This writer was struck by one stark difference, in that Sneha Mahesh performed on a bare stage - with even the announcements from backstage - whereas the tastefully decorated altar for Jagannath greeting the onlookers for the Group Odissi recital led  by teacher Pravat Kumar Swain, was the starting point of prolonged formalities, which went on for over quarter of an hour – with every person known to the dance world in the audience, being called to the stage to be honoured - draped with elegant dupattas, with the hospitality involving  a bag containing other goodies!.... 

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Article - The lullaby that awakened - Dr. Lata Surendra

The First Gurus!

'To be is to know that you are not separate, but an ongoing flow of every history gone before.'

My father was the scholar and linguist who awakened me to the magic of words. Through scriptures, chants, and books, he introduced me to friends across epochs. He taught me to romance poets who charmed my soul, and philosophers who silenced the hunger of the dust. In his eyes, I sought to dance past every milestone; he made achievement so effortless that it became a habit. Yet, when I grew too lost in the past, he gently urged, "Close the books now, dear, and read from the pages of life." Growing up under British rule, his accent was flawlessly British - to me, he was simply the ideal, and he was my own.

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Anita says...August 2026

July has been 31 days of ceaseless unrest. Ablaze with arguments and heated rhetoric about issues of representation and race swapping. About translations, cinematic liberty and appropriation. The rumble became a roar with the student unrests in India that started in with a leaked examination paper and the subsequent student protests in New Delhi has rocked the government and the ripples continue as I write this monthly message. 

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