Narrative

A narrative sacred dance tells a specific sacred story or historical episode through choreographed gesture and mime, closer to a danced drama than to ecstatic trance or a procession between sites. Bharatanatyam and Odissi, recorded here alongside Noh and the Ohafia war dance, also exist as classical performance traditions on a secular stage, and whether a given performance counts as worship or as art depends on a context the dance itself does not settle.