April 2026: From the Archives: This essay, ‘Oral, Aural, and Written: Bharatanatyam Teaching by Nattuvanars and Courtesans,’ (2017, revised 2025), explores how hereditary teachers transmitted the art through three modes: oral, aural, and written. Through observation within these traditions, the oral guided and the written preserved, but it was the aural, learning through the ear rather than the eye, that formed the heart of hereditary teaching. What was written offered a trace. What was heard gave it life.
‘The Tanjore Quartet’s Dāni ké: Desire, Longing and the Courtesan’s Voice’ (2026).
From the Archives: ‘Nāṭanam Āṭinār and Naṭarāja: Context and Performance’ (2009, revised 2012) by Jeetendra Hirschfeld. This essay traces the history and performance trajectory of the kīrtanam Nāṭanam Āṭinār within the Bharatanatyam repertoire. It situates the composition against the broader twentieth-century rise of Śiva as Naṭarāja as a central figure on the modern stage, examining how Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s influential 1918 essay shaped this shift. Drawing on performance history and personal communications, it follows the composition across lineages and artists, and considers its distinctive rhythmic structure as a contribution to the evolving margam. The essay argues that both the composition and the margam itself are better understood as twentieth-century consolidations rather than fixed inheritances.
February 2026: From the archives: Essay: ‘Tanjore Quartet Varnams and Frisson of Desire: Rāga Kalyāṇi, Sarasa Śikhāmaṇi, Sarasijākṣudu’ (2015) by Jeetendra Hirschfeld. —Though they share an identical melodic framework, Sarasijākṣudu and Sarasa Śikhāmaṇi, two rāga Kalyāṇi varnams attributed to Sivanandam of the Tanjore Quartet, ask markedly different questions of the dancer. Both compositions share a vocabulary of longing and emotional urgency, yet their original addressees, a deity in one case and a living king in the other, demand distinct modes of articulation and restraint. Situating these varṇams within their nineteenth-century courtly contexts, this essay examines how place, situation, and audience shaped the expression of desire. It argues that restraint and directness function as deliberate, situation-bound expressive choices rather than stylistic preferences. Through close attention to text, imagery, and performance setting, the essay offers dancers and teachers a practical framework for recalibrating interpretation today, clarifying when desire is negotiated through indirection and when it may be articulated with confidence and intimacy.
The Proust Questionnaire
The Proust Questionnaire is a set of simple, open-ended questions that gently encourage people to speak about themselves, what they value, fear, enjoy, or quietly struggle with. Although it is named after the French writer Marcel Proust, he did not invent it; he simply answered it, and in doing so showed how revealing such questions could be. There are no clever or correct responses here, only honest ones. When Bharatanatyam artists respond to the questionnaire, it often opens a small window into the person behind the practice. Beyond technique, training, or reputation, we begin to see temperament, humour, hesitation, and conviction. Re-sharing these responses now feels a bit like reopening a time capsule, one that captures how Bharatanatyam artists once saw themselves, in their own words, at a particular moment.
Read the Interviews:
Tanjore Gnyana, Star Dancer of the 19th Century
Discover Indian Dance History
Dancer Tanjore Gnyana, who, at just eighteen years of age, immortalised herself through a singular performance at the Royapuram Railway Station in Madras. On Friday, 17 December 1875, she danced before Edward, Prince of Wales, during his visit to the city, in the presence of maharajahs, nobles, zamindars, and the elite of the Madras Presidency. That evening, 150 years ago, Gnyana stepped into nineteenth-century modernity, transitioning from temple and durbar to one of its earliest public stages: a space illuminated by chandeliers and early electric lighting, before a rare confluence of local, national, and international audiences.
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Watch the PODCAST about Tanjore Gnyana:
Additional Essays Referring to Tanjore Gnyana:
Tanjore Quartet: Examining Timelessness of Repertoire and Sequence (2008, revised 2010)
Essays by Jeetendra Hirschfeld
For Bharatanatyam practitioners worldwide, Tanjavur is synonymous with the magnificent 11th-century Brihadisvara Temple and the renowned 19th-century dance masters, the Tanjore Quartet.
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