Story of Indian Dancing

This article explores history and origin of dancing in Indian sub-continent.

The story of the Western world, from classical Greece up to the present day, is one of wars and famines. But it is also a record of ways of life that changed as Western man invented new ideas and machines to improve the world in which he lived.

The story of the Eastern world is different: it is a story also of wars and famine, but in a continent where man accepted problems, seeking less to solve them than to find relief in religious meditation. Thus, in most Eastern lands, ways of life and art have remained the same for many centuries.

Indian dancing, unlike that of Greece, is today-as it was perhaps 2000 years ago-the oldest dance tradition of the cultured world. We have no need to guess the movements of the gestures, frozen in time on temple carvings centuries ago.

Indian dance, like the dance of Greece, is one of mime and gestures. Perhaps, when Alexander the Great invaded India in 327 B.C., he introduced from Greece some of the dances of that land. Or possibly, some centuries before his time, the dance of India had spread to Greece, where it survives to this day in works of art alone.

Dancing is deeply rooted in Indian life and thought. Traditional belief says the god Siva set the world in motion with a dance, a belief perhaps derived from the world's first cultured people, whose priests declared the stars moved in a dance. In southern India, temple sculptures show the god as Nataraja (King of Dancers). Statuettes with many arms perpetuate his gestures. Others depict Parvati, Siva's wife, inventor of the softer, women's dances.

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