Among the usual set of what is considered art (painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.), the most unusual and surprising for the European in the art of India is the Indian dance.

Traditional Indian dances originate in the Vedas. Indian dance is designed to reproduce everything on earth - animals, people, plants, natural phenomena and emotions. Dances tell stories of gods and heroes.

The most ancient Indian dance Bharatanatyam (the name translates as emotion-music-rhythm-dance-theater) for more than five thousand years. This is a temple dance, a dance-prayer. In Kerala "courageous dance" - kathkali was spread. Dancers in bulky costumes, complex makeup and immense headdresses embody the story lines of classic heroic poems in the dance. Dances devoted to Krishna are manipuli are common in the northeast of India

Indian girls,

pots

and temples

Hindu dance is a language that is understandable without an interpreter. Each gesture has a meaning, moreover, strictly defined. Movements and postures in dance should be repeated in a canonical sequence. Hand gestures are the guiding thread of Indian dance. And the flexibility and plasticity of well-known dancers can be envied even by advanced yogis.

And it's not surprising - only for studying the basic dance movements should one spend from five to ten years of life. Basic knowledge consists of 108 poses of Shiva. In the process, 24 head positions, 27 hand gestures, 26 eye movements, more than a hundred finger positions and so on are added to them, and so on. Each pose has a name, and each gesture denotes an object, an emotion, an abstract concept or an entire scene.

The Chidambaram temple complex, located in the south of India for year-round sacred dance festivals from all over the world, pilgrims arrive and tourists. The sculptural decoration of the churches repeats the poses of the dancers (and, on the contrary, the dance animates the poses frozen in stone).