1. There actually is a WordPress bharatanatyam blog! It gives some good history, including more detailed descriptions of things that I related in bits and pieces earlier. The blog does seem kind of new and not really fully formed yet. I hope to see more here in the future.
2, There is a list of 1000 public ratings of Bharata Natyam dancers! If anybody needs more names of dancers to look for, I guess this is the place to go. People who only know the filmi dancing (among whom I counted myself until a very short time ago) should still recognize a couple of names here. I noticed Vyjayanthimala at number 5 (which I assume would mean the contemporary 70-something Vyjayanthimala, or else she’d be number #1?) and Shobana Chandrakumar at about number 9. I wouldn’t take the rankings too seriously – probably they’re deliberately underrating the dancers who are famous in films. (That’s what I think, but what do I know?) It’s still a very informative list.
3. YouTube itself. There are tons of bharatanatyam clips. I’ve been looking at a lot of them during the past week, when I haven’t had any movies queued up and didn’t want to get to other things, as a “time pass.” I also find these dance clips can cheer me up or soothe me. (And it’s been a pretty hard week – don’t ask; you don’t want to read about it all here!)
So now I know about a bunch of contemporary bharatanatyam dancers who’ve never been in films.
One nice YouTube source is the classical Indian dance enthusiast Minaiminai. I’ve already borrowed from her site a few times to post Shobana clips. Here’s another bharatanatyam dancer she posted whom I enjoyed watching, Apoorva Jayaraman:
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P.S. (8/27): More sources found: Bharatanatyam and the World Wide Web, Bharat Natyam, Life is not Bollywood…
Hey Richard, this a nice way of letting people know about this divine art form. I have been blogging on bharatanatyam for quite sometime and the blog aims at providing Bharatanatyam lessons online. Do visit our new site http://onlinebharatanatyam.com/ and let me know on how we can improve.
So nice to see all these Bharat Natyam links. The only professional I have ever watched live is Sonal Mansingh, and she was brilliant. Although Odissi is what she is supposed to be best at, I saw her give a didactic performance on Bharat Natyam and that was good!
Sigh..another blog world to keep up with!
Hi,
Thank you for your post about my blog http://natyavidya.wordpress.com . I have not found much time to update my blog. Your post has inspired me to keep my blog updated so that those who seek information about Bharata Natyam can find it in my blog.
Please feel free to offer your suggestions. I would also like to know more about you.