Dance in India - Contemporary Dance

Contemporary Dance

Contemporary dance in India encompasses a wide range of dance activities currently performed in India. It includes choreography for Indian cinema, modern Indian ballet and experiments with existing classical and folk forms of dance by various artists.

Uday Shankar and Shobana Jeyasingh are accredited as the pioneers of modern Indian dance. He was not trained in any classical dance form but developed his own style based on his study of Rajput and Mughal paintings. Other well known proponents of modern dance in India include Ram Gopal, Mrinalini Sarabhai and Chandralekha. Poet Rabindranath Tagore developed a dance genre popularly known as Rabindra Nritya Natya—dance-dramas composed by him. These dance dramas and dances set on Rabindra sangeet (songs written by Tagore) are popular in Bengali culture.

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