What are the key dance pieces in bharatanatyam when building up a repertoire for stage? This course helps the student dancer get a sense of the possible structuring of a bharatanatyam performance. The pieces to be imparted will put emphasis on the twin aspects of this dance style in equal measure. In the one aspect, technical or ‘pure’ dance, the links between capacity-building and the sequencing of steps encountered in dance pieces will be looked at and constantly recalibrated. The other aspect, expression or abhinayam, will be developed by strengthening the relationship between emotive gesture and musical poetry. The tangible outcome of the course will be the mastering of two contrasting pieces of repertoire. It is assumed the student will have already attained a basic skill level in bharatanatyam, which includes fairly extensive knowledge of movement (adavus) and gesture (hasta-based) vocabularies.
