Indian dancing

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ABHINAYAMKURAM : THE LANGUAGE OF GESTURES

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One of the most eloquent of languages is the gesture language defined in Nandikeshwara’s Abhinaya Darpanam and Bhatata’s Natya Shastra. While the different schools of Indian dancing have different rules, there ate some rules that serve as fundamental ptinciples for every technique.

NATYADHARMA AND LOKADHARMA

Dharma means ‘code’. Natyadbarma and Lokadbarma ate the ptincipal codes of the Indian dance-drama.

1. Natyadbarma is a code or tule of conduct for the artist. It teaches him deportment and how to create sincere appreciation in the audience, not of himself but rather of the purport of the drama.

2. Lokadharma is subsidiary to natyadharma. This code exhorts the player to employ realism for the purpose of swaying his audience. Thus he is called upon not merely to feign sorrow but to work up his emotions to a pitch that will produce genuine grief with its concomitants of real tears and a brow furrowed with anguish.

The chief difference between atyadharma and lokadharma is that the former advocates imaginativeness, the latter realism.

Natya demands of the spectator a basic knowledge of its technique as well as a grounding in Hindu culture, so that he may interpret the drama for himself rather than accept literally the interpretation offered from the stage.

ABHINAYA

There are, in all, four types of dramatic expression derived from the four Vedas and based on the four planes:

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