Spotlight

From Holistic Theatre To Specialised Mime

Performing arts everywhere go through two dialectical developments: (i) from participatory folk performance to a cleardistinction between performer and audience; and (ii) from a composite structure of different arts like music, dance, costume and stage setup onto specialization in one of them. In Indian classical dance and music, the first development, namely elitisation and classicalisation, seems to have occurred early. The second development took quite a few centuries from Bharata's detailed discussion of a holistic theatre, including dance, music and costume, in his Natya Sastra, to Nandikeswara's concentration on dance alone, with a sharp focus on mime (abhinaya), in his Abhinaya Darpana to the marginalisation of music, costume or stage setup. Can this transition be explained in terms of societal developments or was it based purely on internal reasons? As a social scientist, I believe that it was strongly influenced by societal conditions. What follows is a brief attempt at such a socio-historicalexplanation of this transition.

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