"Dance is the language of the soul."   Hema Rajagopalan

Bharata Natyam is a contemporary dance-theatre form that is rooted in the ancient traditions of South Indian performance. It is renowned globally as a powerful rhythmic and theatrical style of dance. The dance incorporates distinct and powerful percussive sounds of rhythmic footwork, intricate and nuanced bodily movements, precise hand gestures and theatrical story-telling that communicates complex emotions. As a performance form, Bharata Natyam truly transforms music and literature into visual poetry movement.

As one of the several Indian classical dance forms, Bharata Natyam is rooted in Sage Bharata's treatise on music, dance and drama, the Natya Shastra. In this text, Bharata described the classical dance as incorporating three main forms: Natya, theatrical performance, Nritya, the interpretation of lyrics through gesture, expression and movement and Nritta, abstract movements. Significantly undergirding the dance is its ability to convey spirituality to humanity. Like many artistic traditions across the globe Bharata Natyam's original purpose was to connect the performers and the audience to a higher spiritual power, thus achieving Rasa, an aesthetic experience of joy or bliss. This spiritual connection is apparent in the history prior to the development of the form, when in Hindu temples; dance was a part of ritual and religion.

Today, Bharata Natyam is not only limited to India, but a global dance practice. Expanding beyond the ancient traditions of the temples, the repertoire today is infused with both the richness of traditions form the past and the courage for innovation inspired by the present. Performing the dance takes years of devotion and rigorous training. The dance continues to be a form that strikes deeply in humanity, communicating through movement the spiritual and the social. With this rich inheritance of dance theatre, Natya Dance Theatre through Bharata Natyam dance, comments on the spiritual and the social, the past, present and the future.