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Gaudiya Nritya was primarily a temple art, meant to give expression to the artist's spiritual feelings. The antiquity could be traced back to Ramacharita Kavya, Manasa Mangal Kavya and other literature from the Pala era.

The dance reliefs of the 9th century Javanese temple of Loro Jonggrang, at Prambanan, identifiable as representations of the karanas of the Natyasastra, use an animation device: the movement sequence is performed by three figures in each dance relief, whose positions, performed in succession give the overall movement pattern (Iyer 1997). This seems to be a clever attempt to solve the paradox of representing a movement through a static medium. ('Dancing ancient texts and temple sculptures'by Alessandra Lopez y Royo - ebook: ReConstructing and RePresenting dance: exploring the dance/archaeology conjunction, Metamedia Collaborative, Stanford University, 2007 http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/117/Home)

In the famous illustrated Jain manuscript of the Kalpasutra belonging to the 15th century, i.e. the Devasanpada Kalpasutra as also in another belonging to Jamnagar dated 1501, there is a prolific depiction of samapada, the tribhangi and the chauka reminiscent of the Orissi dance. ('Indian Classical Dance' by Kapila Vatsyayan, chapter 'Odissi')

Snippets - Monthwise listing

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