Bharatanatyam is the classical dance of Tamil Nadu, performed by temple dancers under the older name sadir attam for several centuries before being renamed and codified in the 1930s. The dance is built on a fixed posture (aramandi, a half-sit with bent knees), a vocabulary of stamped foot-units (adavus), a system of hand gestures (mudras) drawn from the Natya Shastra, and a seven-item recital sequence called the margam. The Sangeet Natak Akademi recognises it as one of the eight classical dance forms of India. Its theoretical scaffolding is the Sanskrit Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni, dated by most scholars between 500 BCE and 500 CE.
From sadir to Bharatanatyam: the 1932 renaming
The dance was performed at Tamil temples for centuries by hereditary devadasi communities and was called sadir attam or dasi attam. Under colonial-era anti-nautch campaigns the temple dance was banned from temples in 1910 by the Madras Presidency. The 1932 Madras Music Academy meeting is the conventional date for the renaming: the lawyer and dance advocate E. Krishna Iyer and the theosophist-dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale (born 29 February 1904, Madurai) proposed Bharatanatyam, a name pulled from the four letters bha (bhava, expression), ra (raga, melody), ta (tala, rhythm), with natyam meaning dance, and also a tribute to the sage Bharata of the Natya Shastra.
Rukmini Devi founded the Kalakshetra Foundation in 1936 at Adyar, Chennai, training generations of dancers in what came to be called the Kalakshetra style. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1957 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1967. The other widely cited revivalist, T. Balasaraswati (1918–1984), worked from the older hereditary devadasi tradition and preserved a different stylistic strand emphasising abhinaya (expressive interpretation) over geometric line.
The Thanjavur Quartet and the margam
The formal seven-item recital order, known as the margam (“the path”), was structured in the early 19th century by the Thanjavur Quartet, four brothers (Chinnayya, Ponnayya, Sivanandam, Vadivelu) who served in the court of Maratha king Serfoji II of Thanjavur (reign 1798–1832). They composed the music for each item in the recital and standardised the progression from technical to expressive.
- Alarippu: the opening invocation, a pure-dance offering of body and rhythm without melody.
- Jatiswaram: pure dance set to a raga and tala, no lyrics, building rhythmic complexity.
- Shabdam: the first item with sung text, usually in praise of a deity or patron.
- Varnam: the central, longest and most demanding item, alternating pure dance with abhinaya across one composition.
- Padam: slow, expressive piece, devotional or shringara in mood.
- Javali: shorter, lighter love song.
- Tillana: closing pure-dance piece, fast and rhythmic, often the most visually dynamic.
A full margam runs around 90 to 120 minutes; truncated versions in modern stage practice may drop the javali or compress the varnam.
The grammar: adavus, hastas, aramandi
The technical vocabulary is built on three layers. Adavus are the basic step-units, combinations of foot, leg, body and arm positions performed in three speeds. Most schools teach roughly 120 named adavus organised into about a dozen families (tatta, natta, paika, kuditta-mettu, and so on). Hastas are the hand gestures: 28 single-hand (asamyuta hasta) and 24 double-hand (samyuta hasta) positions are enumerated in the Natya Shastra and the later Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikeshwara, each one carrying multiple symbolic meanings. Aramandi is the half-sit, knees turned outward in a diamond, that the dancer holds for most of the recital; the deeper version, muzhumandi, is a full sit.
The dancer is accompanied by a fixed ensemble: a nattuvanar (conductor, calling the rhythmic syllables with cymbals), vocalist, mridangam, violin or flute, and sometimes veena. The nattuvanar’s recited syllables (jathis, like ta-ka-dhi-mi) lock the dance to the music.
Costume and presentation
The stage costume is a stitched silk garment styled to resemble a sari, with a pleated fan-shaped panel at the front that opens into a fan when the dancer takes aramandi. Heavy temple jewellery, ghungroo bells weighing one to two kilograms strapped above the ankles, and red alta outlining the palms, fingertips and feet are standard. The eyes are heavily outlined; expressive eye-work is a graded skill, taught separately as drishti-bheda (movements of the eye) listed in the Natya Shastra.
For what it’s worth, a note on the two strands
For what it’s worth, the Kalakshetra-Rukmini Devi strand and the Balasaraswati-hereditary strand are still distinguishable on stage today, and a viewer new to the form benefits from seeing one of each before forming a preference. The Kalakshetra style is geometric, broad-stanced, with crisp lines, suited to large auditoriums. The Balasaraswati strand sits closer, with a slower abhinaya rhythm and more intimate facial work, better at the older devadasi repertoire. Neither is “correct”; the field has lived with both for nearly a century.
Where to see live Bharatanatyam
- Chennai’s Margazhi season (mid-December to mid-January) hosts hundreds of recitals across sabhas like the Music Academy, Krishna Gana Sabha and Narada Gana Sabha. Day passes are cheap; the audience is patient and experienced.
- The Natyanjali festival at Chidambaram Nataraja Temple, held annually around Maha Shivaratri (February–March), brings dancers from across India to the temple stage in five evenings of performances.
- Kalakshetra’s annual December festival at Tiruvanmiyur, Chennai, includes graduating-student recitals and senior faculty performances.
Common questions
How long does it take to learn Bharatanatyam?
The conventional foundational training is seven years to arangetram (the formal stage debut), with classes typically three to five times a week. The first year is mostly adavu drill and aramandi conditioning. Items from the margam are taught gradually from year three onward. Professional performers continue learning under a guru for life; the seven-year span is the floor, not the ceiling.
Is Bharatanatyam strictly devotional or also secular?
The historical repertoire is overwhelmingly devotional, with most padams and varnams composed in praise of Shiva, Krishna, Murugan or local temple deities. Modern choreographers have created secular work on themes from poetry, social issues, and abstract concepts. Both strands coexist; festivals usually program devotional items, while contemporary stage seasons may include experimental work.
Why is the dancer’s posture so low?
Aramandi keeps the dancer’s centre of gravity low and stable, makes the rhythmic stamping audible, and produces the clean lines that read across an auditorium. It also distributes load through quadriceps and glutes rather than the lower back, which is why correctly trained Bharatanatyam dancers can perform a 90-minute margam without compromising the line.
A limitation worth noting
This article uses the canonical Kalakshetra-Thanjavur framing because that is what most Indian and overseas pedagogy is built on. The older hereditary nattuvanar banis (lineages) of Vazhuvur, Pandanallur, Mysore and Kanchipuram each had distinct repertoires, gait, and abhinaya conventions, and academic scholarship on those lineages is still active. For a serious student, the bani question is unavoidable and benefits from in-person training with a guru in that specific tradition.
For further reading, the Bharatanatyam entry on Wikipedia compiles the textual and historical references. The Sangeet Natak Akademi maintains a list of recipients and an overview of the recognised classical dance forms at sangeetnatak.gov.in.
