The Literature of Dance

Abstract

The earliest extant Sanskrit work on music, drama and dance, and also the most influential as a source of both technical description and aesthetic understanding is theNātyaśāstra, which is believed to have been written not later than the 2nd century A. D.¹ The work deals with dramaturgy and the arts allied to drama in thirty-seven chapters, of which those of interest to students of dancing are chapters 4, 5, 8–12, 19, 21, 22, 25 and 31. The fourth chapter discusses tāndavavidhi, that is, the rules of tāndava or dancing.² In this chapter Bharata mentions five concepts that help to define the art of dancing. These concepts, nrtta, tāndava, abhinaya, pindibandha and sukumāraprayoga, are discussed in a separate chapter of the present study. Bharata’s interest in the fourth chapter is centred on nrtta, that is, non-representational dancing and valued for the beauty of its form. He describes this dance style in detail, giving the basic units of composite movements known as karanas, and the basic choreographic sequences known as angahāras. In addition, he describes group dances and mentions the use of body movements in acting without giving details.³ Bharata speaks of these movements as necessary parts of the preliminaries of a dramatic presentation.