- In full:
- Thanjavur Balasaraswati
- Born:
- May 13, 1918, Madras [now Chennai], India
- Died:
- February 9, 1984, Madras [now Chennai], India (aged 65)
T. Balasaraswati
-
Who was T. Balasaraswati?
T. Balasaraswati (1918–1984) was a dancer and singer of Carnatic (South Indian) music and a foremost exponent of the bharata natyam style of classical dance in the 20th century. She was instrumental in expanding the performance of this dance form beyond temples and in cultivating international appreciation for it.
Balasaraswati came from a family of musicians and dancers descended from those who served the 18th-century Thanjavur court. She began training at age five and debuted at age seven, stunning audiences with her rhythmically executed movements. As she matured, she became adept at both nritta (nonrepresentational movement) and abhinaya (movement depicting specific emotions or moods).
2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What forms of art was T. Balasaraswati known for?
T. Balasaraswati (1918-1984) was a foremost exponent of the bharata natyam style of classical dance in the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition, and she was also a singer.
Balasaraswati excelled in nritta (nonrepresentational movement) and abhinaya (movement depicting specific emotions or moods). She was especially known for her abhinaya (expressive interpretation) of padams. She helped broaden the performance of this dance form beyond temples and cultivated international appreciation for it.
3 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What is Bharatanatyam, and how did T. Balasaraswati contribute to it?
Bharatanatyam is a classical Indian dance that originated in Tamil Nadu. Its origins can be traced back to the Natyashastra, an ancient treatise on theater. Bharatanatyam was originally performed in temples by women and was used to express Hindu religious stories. The dance is characterized by bent legs and rhythmic feet, while the hands use mudras, or symbolic hand gestures, to tell a story.
T. Balasaraswati was one of the 20th century's most important exponents of Bharatanatyam. She helped broaden the performance of this dance style beyond temples and fostered international appreciation for it. Balasaraswati belonged to a family of musicians and dancers descended from those who served the 18th-century Thanjavur court. She was especially known for her abhinaya (expressive interpretation) of padams.
3 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What made T. Balasaraswati’s style of dance unique or special?
T. Balasaraswati (1918-1984) was a foremost exponent of the bharata natyam style of classical dance. She was known for her abhinaya (expressive interpretation) of padams, which are songs in Telegu, Tamil, or Kannada that the dancer dramatizes through facial expressions and hand gestures. Balasaraswati understood the shringara elements (erotic depictions of divine love) as beautiful and spiritual, which was integral to the bharata natyam tradition. She helped to expand the performance of this dance form beyond temples and cultivated international appreciation for it.
2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How did T. Balasaraswati help spread Indian classical dance to other countries?
T. Balasaraswati, a foremost exponent of the bharata natyam style of classical dance, was instrumental in expanding the performance of this dance form beyond temples and cultivating international appreciation of the art form.
Balasaraswati gained international recognition in the early 1960s, with performances in East Asia, Europe, and North America. She held residencies as a teacher and performer at various institutions, such as Wesleyan University and the University of Washington. Through her international engagements and activities in India, Balasaraswati exposed countless audiences to the traditional style of bharata natyam and trained many new practitioners of the art form.
2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
Why is T. Balasaraswati remembered as an important figure in Indian performing arts today?
T. Balasaraswati (1918–1984) remains an important figure in Indian performing arts today because she was one of the foremost exponents of the bharata natyam style of classical dance in the 20th century. She expanded the performance of this dance form beyond temples and cultivated international appreciation for it. Balasaraswati helped revive interest in bharata natyam in the 1950s by establishing a dance school and training new dancers. She gained international recognition in the early 1960s, performing and teaching in East Asia, Europe, North America, and the United States. For her contributions, she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1955 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1977.
1 Britannica SourceCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
T. Balasaraswati (born May 13, 1918, Madras [now Chennai], India—died February 9, 1984, Madras [now Chennai], India) was an Indian dancer and singer in the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition, who was one of the 20th century’s foremost exponents of the bharata natyam style of classical dance. She was instrumental not only in expanding the performance of this dance form beyond the precincts of the temples where it was traditionally performed but also in cultivating international appreciation of the art form.
Balasaraswati belonged to an unbroken lineage of musicians and dancers descended from those who served the 18th-century Thanjavur court. Born into the community of female temple servants, or devadasis, who maintained the bharata natyam tradition, she started training at the age of five under the renowned nattuvanar (bharata natyam director) Kandappa Pillai. At age seven she had her arangetram (debut public performance) at a shrine to the goddess Devi in the city of Kanchipuram and stunned the audience with her rhythmically executed movements. As Balasaraswati matured, she became ever more adept at both nritta (nonrepresentational movement) and abhinaya (movement depicting specific emotions or moods). As a young teenager, she was seen by internationally known Indian dancer and choreographer Uday Shankar, who became an ardent promoter of her performances, and throughout the 1930s she captured the imagination of audiences across India.
The frequency of Balasaraswati’s performances decreased sharply during the 1940s, partly because she suffered periods of poor health but more significantly as a result of the promotion and passage of the Madras Devadasis Prevention of Dedication Act (1947). Devadasis typically lived in matrilineal households, and many of the women were married—or dedicated—to a temple deity, which precluded them from marrying any mortal man whom they took as a partner. This social system did not match that of mainstream Indian society, and, consequently, the activities of the devadasis, including their dancing, whether in temples or as a spiritual offering in private homes, was popularly associated with prostitution. The Devadasi Act was intended to purge India of the perceived social scourge; it prohibited dancing by the devadasis in honor of a deity and essentially outlawed their art form.
Interest in bharata natyam rebounded in the 1950s as the public grew concerned that a unique Indian art form was on the brink of extinction. Balasaraswati, encouraged by an administrator at the Music Academy in Madras, established a dance school in association with the institution. There she trained new dancers in the bharata natyam tradition as she had inherited it from her ancestors and from the broader devadasi community. Meanwhile, a number of prominent artists and arts advocates—notably the Brahman (highest social class) theosophist, dancer, and teacher Rukmini Devi Arundale—championed not only the revival but also the reformulation of bharata natyam, largely to exclude shringara (erotic) depictions of divine love. Such an approach was antithetical to that of Balasaraswati, who understood the shringara elements not as carnal but as beautiful, spiritual, and indeed integral to the bharata natyam tradition.
Balasaraswati began to gain international recognition in the early 1960s, with performances in East Asia, Europe, and North America. Later that decade, throughout the 1970s, and into the early 1980s, she visited the United States repeatedly and held residencies—as both a teacher and a performer—at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia), Mills College (Oakland, California), the University of Washington (Seattle), and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (Beckett, Massachusetts), among other institutions. Through her international engagements as well as her activities in India, especially in Madras, Balasaraswati not only exposed countless audiences to the traditional style of bharata natyam but also trained many new practitioners of the art form.
For her contributions to Indian arts and culture, Balasaraswati received a Sangeet Natak Akademi (India’s national academy of music, dance, and drama) award in 1955 and the Padma Vibhushan, one of the country’s top civilian honors, in 1977. Although she danced extensively throughout her life, she was seldom filmed. In 1976, however, the acclaimed Indian film director Satyajit Ray made a short documentary, Bala, as a tribute to her artistic achievement. In 2006 Aniruddha Knight, Balasaraswati’s grandson, also produced a short documentary.