Joy of Dancing

Dance is an ancient cultural tradition in India. The Indian art of dance is the expression of inner beauty and divine self. Being a classical dancer, I was always curious to know about the origin of Indian classical dance. When I looked into the history of Indian dance, I found that the evidence of earliest dance related texts are found in the text called ‘Natya Shastra’ which was written by Bharat Muni. The title ‘Natya Shastra’ consists of two words, ‘Natya’, which means to act or represent and ‘Shastra’, which refers to manual, book or treatise. ‘Natya Shastra’ is a Sanskrit text on performing arts. Its most studied version consists of 6000 poetic verses divided into 36 chapters describing performing art. The estimation of the composition date of ‘Natya Shastra’ varies between 500BCE to 500CE. Indian dance tradition has roots in the aesthetics of ‘Natya Shastra’. India is a huge country with rich traditions and customs. Different forms of dance originated in differe...

I am a passionate Indian classical dancer. My journey of learning dance started when I was only seven years old. I first started learning dance as a hobby but as years passed, my hobby turned into my passion for dancing. Now I am a trained Kathak dancer (Jaipur Gharana). Dance gives me an immense pleasure. During this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, when most of the people are stressful, anxious, depressed and uncertain about future, I think dance acts as a stress buster. Whenever I feel low and stressful, I start practicing Kathak. Kathak acts like a meditation for me, bringing positive effect on my body and mind. It makes me feel very energetic, happy, relaxed and confident.    Being a passionate dancer, I was always curious to know about the origin of dance. If we look at the origin of dance, we find that archaeological evidence for early dance are found in Egypt and India. 3300 BC Egyptian tomb paintings depicted dancing figures. In India, more than 9000 years ol...