PERFORMING ARTS
Dance
Let drama and dance (Nātya, नाट्य) be the fifth vedic scripture. Combined with an epic
story, tending to virtue, wealth, joy and spiritual freedom, it must contain
the significance of every scripture, and forward every art.
— First chapter of Nātyaśāstra, sometime between
200BC - 200AD
India has had a long romance
with the art of dance. Nātyaśāstra (Science of Dance) and Abhinaya
Darpana (Mirror of Gesture) are two surviving Sanskrit documents, both
estimated to be between 1700 to 2200 years old.
The Indian art of dance as
taught in these ancient books, according to Ragini Devi, is the expression of
inner beauty and the divine in man.[89] It
is a deliberate art, nothing is left to chance, each gesture seeks to
communicate the ideas, each facial expression the emotions.
Indian dance includes eight classical dance forms,
many in narrative forms with mythological
elements. The eight classical forms accorded classical dance status by India's National Academy of Music, Dance, and
Drama are: bharatanatyam
of the state of Tamil Nadu, kathak of Uttar Pradesh, kathakali
and mohiniattam of Kerala, kuchipudi of Andhra Pradesh,
yakshagana
of Karnataka, manipuri of
Manipur, odissi
(orissi) of the state
of Odisha and the sattriya of
Assam.[90][91]
In addition to the formal arts
of dance, Indian regions have a strong free form, folksy dance tradition. Some
of the folk dances
include the bhangra of Punjab; the bihu of Assam; the zeliang of Nagaland; the chhau of Jharkhand; the
qauwwalis, birhas and charkulas of Uttar Pradesh;
the jat-jatin and saturi of Bihar; the ghoomar of Rajasthan; the dandiya and
garba of Gujarat; the
kolattam of Andhra Pradesh; the yakshagana
of Karnataka ; lavani of Maharashtra;Dekhnni of
Goa; Karakattam, Oyilattam, and mayilattam of Tamil Nadu.
Recent developments include
adoption of international dance forms particularly in the urban centres of
India, and the extension of Indian classical dance arts by the Kerala Christian
community, to tell stories from the Bible.
Drama and theatre
Music
Images of musical instruments drawn by Pierre
Sonnerat, the French explorer, in 1782 during his voyage through India.
The oldest preserved examples
of Indian music are the melodies of the Samaveda
(1000 BC) that are still sung in certain Vedic Śrauta
sacrifices; this is the earliest account of Indian musical hymns. It proposed a
tonal structure consisting of seven notes, which were named, in descending
order, as Krusht, Pratham, Dwitiya, Tritiya, Chaturth,
Mandra and Atiswār. These refer to the notes of a flute, which
was the only fixed frequency instrument. The Samaveda, and other Hindu texts, heavily influenced India's classical music tradition, which is known today in
two distinct styles: Carnatic and Hindustani music.
Both the Carnatic music and Hindustani music systems are based on the melodic
base (known as Rāga), sung to
a rhythmic cycle (known as Tāla); these
principles were refined in the nātyaśāstra
(200 BC) and the dattilam (300 AD).
The current music of India
includes multiple varieties of religious, classical, folk, popular
and pop music. Prominent contemporary Indian musical forms included filmi and Indipop. Filmi
refers to the wide range of music written and performed for mainstream Indian cinema,
primarily Bollywood, and accounts for more than 70 percent of all music
sales in the country. Indipop is one of the most popular contemporary styles of
Indian music which is either a fusion of Indian folk,
classical or Sufi music with Western musical traditions.
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