I've restructured our Bahrata Natyam topics and this one now covers articles and comments from 2003 onwards.

<small>[ 17 April 2004, 05:19 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

A nice article in the San Jose Mercury News. I took a class in Bharatha Natyam in college, just one afternoon. One of the hardest dance classes I ever took.

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Thanks for this LMCtech. It's a fascinating rewriting of the 20th C. history of Bharata Natyam. It was European based artists, such as Uday Shankar, who reintroduced the dance form to India in the 20s and 30s and performed it on stage for the first time ever in India.

With this kick-start, the Indian middle-class took up the dance form and it became fashionable for their daughters to study Bharata Natyam for the first time. Then it got wrapped up in the quest for Independence.

It is often quoted as an example of of cultural traditions bouncing between colonial and colonised nations.

Whatever - it is one of the great classical dance art forms.

<small>[ 29 May 2003, 03:17 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Joy of the dance
By PATRICK CONNOLLY for The Tennessean

She remembers twirling and jumping and turning all around, an innocent spirit no older than 5 growing up as a young girl in a country far, far from what officially was ''home.''

But home for Monica Cooley has been where her feet have led her and lead her still today. It has been a path that has brought the American woman to embrace both the dance and the culture of India.

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Rooted in the Present, Mitha Looks to the Past

By Lisa Traiger
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, June 20, 2003; Page WE29

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Dance of the Ages
By Patti Rasmussen for The Signal (Massachusetts)

Contrary to popular belief, South Asian dance isn’t all hip shaking and belly gyrations.
Bharata Natyam is a South India dance performed traditionally as part of a temple and court ceremony dating back to the seventh century.

After several years of training, Valencia High School students Komal and Mala Tejwani held a Bharata Natyam recital in Malibu on Saturday.

Traveling to classes in North Hollywood for the past seven years, Mala, 15, and Komal,17, said the dance is something that Indian parents would like to see their children, both male and female, learn because it teaches them about their culture.

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<img src="http://www.dancing-times.co.uk/Pics/dancingtimes/200308/cover.jpg" alt="" />

Fear and Love in Hertford
By Mark Kindred for The Dancing Times

Hertsdance, the dance development agency for Hertfordshire, has stepped up its education outreach programme this year, to provide workshops and performances in Hertfordshire schools by international artists. These artists spread across a wide spectrum of dance styles from American Hip Hop dancers to a Classical Indian dancer. Our IntoDance! reporter dropped in at Sele School in Hertford to watch Bharata Natyam expert Shilpi Baruri conduct her slick and entertaining workshop.

Shilpi Baruri is undoubtedly one of the most sensational Bharata Natyam dancers to come out of the Calcutta Bharata Natyam circuit in recent years. During her first European appearance, her spellbinding dance choreographed to the tune of “Vande Mataram” fetched her standing ovations at the Purcell Room in the Royal Festival Hall.

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Celestial Vision ballet at Al Bustan
For The Times of Oman


MUSCAT — All dance lovers of Oman can look forward to an evening of dance from Shiva Shakthi School of Dance at the Oman Auditorium of Al Bustan Palace Hotel on September 26, at 6.30pm.

Vasantha Vaikunth, who has enthralled the audience in Oman with several of her dance ballets, Cosmic Harmony in particular, will be performing along with her students. The highlight of the evening will be a ballet — Celestial Vision — in Bharathanatyam style that has a mesmerising music content.

Vasantha Vaikunth, when asked about the theme of her ballet, said: “It is about a mother who gets to experience the divine glimpse in the form of her own child.

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All about love: Billie Holiday meets bharatanatyam dance
By Rohan Preston, Star Tribune


Bharatanatyam set to the songs made famous by Billie Holiday?

Make that a sassy yes.

Although separated by centuries and continents, the millenniums-old Indian dance style and the jazz of the aching 20th-century diva have a lot in common, said choreographer Ranee Ramaswamy, the foremost bharatanatyam exponent in the Twin Cities.

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A dance of a lifetime
Classical Indian solo ties Bethlehem Twp. teen to her family's culture. By Romy Varghese
Of The Morning Call (PA)


A half hour into the most important performance of her life, sweat pooled under the heavy band of jewels that crowned Trisha Mukherjee's forehead. But she still had 21/2 hours of dancing to go.

Backstage, two women — ''aunties'' as Trisha calls them — quickly helped her into her next brilliant costume, even replacing her bindi, a small diamond-shaped decoration set near her eyebrows.

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I have to say that this article made me shudder:

Dancers in Full Bloom
From The Shanghai Star

Like flowers in full bloom, girls from ages 14 to 17 are at their best. At the Guangzhou Grand World Scenic Park Dance School (GGWSPDS), there are 24 such girls who indulge themselves in dance, a form of art that means elegance to the audience but cruelty to the performers.

In July 1996, Zhang Jun, one of the founders of the China Oriental Song & Dance Ensemble and an eminent expert in Indian dance, and Liang Langxing, vice-headmaster of the Guangdong Dance School, spent ten days enrolling students aged 12 to 15 in the cities of Changsha, Wuhan, and Pingdingshan. They then established the GGWSPDS, which offers 3-year dance programs, under the Guangdong Dance School on September 2nd the same year.

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Why, what could you possibly have found to shudder at in this article??

The authoritarian nature of the school.

And the first sentence.

The school seems no more authoritarian than many Western ballet academies, especially in the recent past. Of course, that might well be something to shudder about.

As for the first sentence --- I would not put too much into it, knowing that this is from an English-language newspaper in a Chinese culture.