Indian dancing

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THE REVIVAL OF INDIAN DANCING

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THE art of Indian dancing, reputedly divine in origin, was, as we have seen, an elaborate science almost at the dawn of the country’s civilization. In the course of centuries it has survived many ups and downs. Its worst eclipse started with the Moghul invasion and ended with the last years of British rule in India.

Foreign cultural aggression led to the neglect of our indigenous atts, resulting in a love of alien culture to the detriment of our own. Consequently, among the young people of the ‘smart set’ of India to-day, Western ball-toom dancing is far more popular than Indian classical dances. But, despite all kinds of upheavals —social, political, and economic — our dance att was never completely annihilated. It survived in obscurity the ravages of time and of neglect. Those who kept the flame burning were not the products of our schools and colleges, but simple sons and daughters of the soil, living in remote villages.

In the palm-fringed land of Malabar, the peasants of Kerala went on dancing the dances that were their traditional heritage. It is from here that the ancient art of Kathakali springs. It owes its survival to gurus such as Kunjukurup of Thakazhi, Narayan Nair of Kavalapara, Ravunni Menon of Pattambi, and their pupils, Madhavan, Haridas, and Gopinath. Less than twenty years ago, the poet Vallathol, translator of the Puranas and of Valmiki’s Ramayana, went to live among these people and opened the Kerala Kalamandalam, an art centte intended to revive and unify many of the national arts of Kerala or Malabar.

In Tanjore, also in the south of India and far from the gteat centres of modern civilization, the Bharata Natyam technique was

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