Dance Gurukuls

I was looking for some interesting places to go around Bangalore, and not the usual waterfalls and banks of the Cauvery river. An interesting place which I came across is Nrityagram, a Gurukul for various Indian Dance forms. This further led me on a trail to discover all the possible such gurukuls across India. I realized that some common centres for dance schools are the states of Orissa and Tamil Nadu, mainly due to Bharatanatyam and Odissi becoming the most famed dance styles in India. There are some specific forms of Dance which are taught by the great gurus at some small villages and temples; these are usually taken up by very keen pupils especially who wish to advance their present knowledge about the dance and the techniques.

These are some prominent dance schools which I came across in India. Each of them have been set up by a famous dancer and many students enroll in these schools to work towards their passion and simultaneously complete their basic education. Some students who further wish to graduate in Arts, can stay in the school premises and are given complete theoretical and practical knowledge about dance, fts forms, history etc.

Here is a list of famous dance schools in India:

• Mahagami
• Nrityagram
• Kalakshetra
• Raja Radha Reddy
• Purva School of Bharatanatyam

One feature very prevalent in the dance realm is that its still very much a woman's world, very few men venture into this line and very few stay on to gather accolades. I guess something as grace is still considered by the world at large as a woman's arena.

After a comment from Shrav, I thought I should also look into some of the western schools which are famous in India, and I found just very few to start with, and fewer who were into a very long tradition of teaching performing arts like the above schools. These are the few Western schools of interest I found:

• Salsa India
• Shiamak Davar, Institute of Performing Arts

The rest are many in number, but not very well known, and not widespread across India.