The Nine Rasas in Bharatanatyam

The nine rasas, or navarasa, are the aesthetic "flavours" that Bharatanatyam aims to awaken in its audience: shringara (love), hasya (humour), karuna (compassion), raudra (anger), veera (heroism), bhayanaka (fear), bibhatsa (disgust), adbhuta (wonder) and shanta (peace). The dancer portrays an emotion, called a bhava, and a receptive audience tastes it as rasa.

Where the idea of rasa comes from

The theory of rasa is set out in the Natya Shastra, the Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts attributed to Bharata Muni and dated roughly between 200 BCE and 200 CE. The word rasa literally means juice, taste or essence. Just as a meal is more than its separate ingredients, a performance is meant to leave the spectator with a single, savoured experience that is more than the sum of the dancer's movements.

The Natya Shastra names eight rasas. Shanta, the rasa of peace and inner stillness, was added by later theorists and is now so widely accepted that Bharatanatyam teachers speak of navarasa, nine rasas, as a matter of course.

Rasa and bhava: what is the difference?

Bhava, the emotional state, belongs to the performer. Rasa belongs to the audience. A dancer depicts anger through flared nostrils, a fixed stare and sharp, forceful hands; the audience, watching, experiences raudra rasa. The Natya Shastra explains that rasa arises from the combination of three things:

• Vibhava, the causes or circumstances that give rise to an emotion (the beloved, a moonlit garden, an insult).
• Anubhava, the visible responses to it (a smile, a glance away, a trembling hand).
• Vyabhichari or sanchari bhava, the passing, transitory feelings that colour the main emotion (doubt, impatience, shyness, pride).

Underneath these lies the sthayi bhava, the stable, dominant emotion that each rasa is built on. Love is the sthayi bhava of shringara; sorrow is the sthayi bhava of karuna.

The nine rasas at a glance

In real choreography the rasas rarely appear one at a time. A single line of a varnam may move from shringara to impatience to sorrow and back, and much of the skill lies in the transitions.

How rasa fits into the four kinds of abhinaya

Abhinaya, the art of expression, is traditionally divided into four parts. Angika abhinaya uses the body: head, eyes, hands, torso and feet. Vachika abhinaya is the spoken or sung word, which in Bharatanatyam is carried by the vocalist and the lyrics. Aharya abhinaya is costume, jewellery and make-up, which you can read about in our guide to Bharatanatyam costume and jewellery. Sattvika abhinaya is the inner, felt quality of the emotion.

The hands do a great deal of the storytelling. A dancer showing a lotus, a peacock or a bow relies on hastas, explained in our article on mudras, the language of the hands. But a perfect hasta with an empty face communicates very little. Rasa appears when angika, vachika and aharya are animated by sattvika.

What is sattvika abhinaya?

Sattvika abhinaya comes from sattva, the mind or inner being. The Natya Shastra describes eight sattvika bhavas, states that are normally involuntary: stambha (becoming motionless), sveda (perspiration), romancha (hair standing on end), svarabheda (a change in the voice), vepathu (trembling), vaivarnya (change of colour), ashru (tears) and pralaya (fainting). A dancer cannot literally summon tears on cue every night, but she can enter the emotion deeply enough that the audience believes the stillness or the trembling is real. This is what experienced rasikas mean when they say a performance "had bhava".

How students practise abhinaya

Expression is learned as carefully as footwork. In most classes, including at Mayura Natyalaya, students work on it in stages:

1. Eyes and face first. Exercises for the eyes (drishti bhedas), the neck and the head teach control of the parts that carry most of the expression. Eyebrows, cheeks and lips are practised separately and then together.
2. Mirror work, used sparingly. A mirror helps a student see whether a smile reaches the eyes, but teachers usually move students away from it quickly so the expression does not become self-conscious.
3. Understanding the lyric. Before dancing a padam, the student learns the meaning of every line, who the characters are and what has just happened. Abhinaya without context looks like a set of faces.
4. Observing life. How does a child sulk, or an elderly person walk when tired? Teachers often ask students to watch people and bring those details into the dance.
5. Sanchari bhavas. More advanced students learn to improvise short elaborations on a single line, showing it in several ways. This is where personal interpretation begins.

A well-known verse from the Abhinaya Darpana sums up the method: where the hand goes, the eyes follow; where the eyes go, the mind follows; where the mind goes, the bhava follows; and where there is bhava, rasa arises.

Rasa in the Pandanallur style

Styles differ in how expression is pitched. The Pandanallur bani, which Mayura Natyalaya teaches, is known for restrained, dignified abhinaya: the emotion is held within a clean, geometric frame rather than exaggerated. You can read more in Understanding the Pandanallur Style. The aim is suggestion. A slight lowering of the eyes in a padam can carry more shringara than a dramatic gesture.

Where you will see the rasas in a performance

Pure dance items such as the alarippu and jathiswaram contain little or no storytelling. Rasa comes forward in the shabdam, the varnam, the padam and the javali, where lyrics give the dancer a character and a situation. The varnam in particular, the centrepiece of the Bharatanatyam margam, moves between rhythmic passages and long stretches of abhinaya, testing both. Devotion runs through much of this repertoire, as explored in Dance as Devotion.

Abhinaya often comes more easily to adult learners, who bring their own experience of love, loss and wonder to the dance. If you are an adult thinking of starting, our adult Bharatanatyam classes page explains how the batches work.