Balasaraswati marriage
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A Biography of an Indian Classical Bharatanatyam Dancer Balasaraswati
Balasaraswati
Dancer
Born: May 13, 1918, Chennai
Died: February 9, 1984, Chennai
Parents: Jayammal
Awards: Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Dance – Bharatanatyam
Tanjore Balasaraswati,[1] also known as Balasaraswati (13 May 1918 – 9 February 1984), was a celebrated Indian dancer, and her rendering of Bharatanatyam, a classical dance style originated in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, made this style of dancing well known in different parts of India and many parts of the world.
She was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1957[2] and the Padma Vibhushan in 1977, the third and the second highest civilian honours given by the Government of India.[1] In 1981 she was awarded the Sangeetha Kalasikhamani award of The Indian Fine Arts Society, Chennai.
Balasaraswati was a seventh generation representative of a traditional matrilineal family of temple musicians and dancers (devadasis,[3] who traditionally enjoyed high social status), who have been described as the greatest single repository of the traditional per
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Tanjore Balasaraswati: The empress of Bharatanatyam
Indian classical dance forms have had a long and tumultuous journey. In south India, for instance, Bharatanatyam was known by different names, such as “Sadir” in Tamil Nadu, before it became popular as “Bharatanatyam”. The documented history of dance practice can be traced back to over a thousand years. It was the preserve of communities of traditional performance practitioners in temple-run economies.
Several families of traditional artists later came to be called “devadasis”, and continued serving the arts. Veena Dhanammal (1867-1938) was one such artist, whose ancestry in the world of performing artists in the courts of the Thanjavur rulers can be traced back over 200 years. Dhanammal was a celebrated veena player and Tanjore Balasaraswati was her granddaughter. Balasaraswati, arguably the greatest exponent of Bharatanatyam in modern India, was primarily responsible for popularizing it in other parts of the country and abroad.
Born in Madras (now Chennai) on 13 May 1918 to Jayammal and Modarapu Govindarajulu, Balasar
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Balasaraswati and the devadasi tradition: Women’s History Month in Dance, 2021
Women’s History Month in Dance, 6, 7, 8. The place of women in dance takes on other facets when we consider the role of the Indian devadasis: women dedicated to the temple by matrilineal succession. Some devadasis were - and perhaps still a few still are - temple courtesans or prostitutes; a moving chapter in William Dalrymple’s “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India” (2009) profiles one of them. This aspect of the devadasi tradition became the object of reform during the later years of the British Raj, less because of the British than because of the Indian Theosophical Society, keen to transform and modernise areas of Indian sociology. But many devadasis - including some who were never given to men for sex - were the foremost practitioners of music and dance. They were what Europeans came to know as bayadères; in some of whom the Indian performing arts were refined to particular peaks. Whereas the Judaeo-Christian tradition has done much to separate dance from religious expression, the I
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