On 21 September 1994, The nameGaudiya Nritya was adopted on the advice ofIndologistBratindra Nath Mukhopadhyay.[11] Reasons for this designation include: in ancient times – thereign of Shashanka and thePala andSena eras – the whole ofBengal was referred to asGauda and the presence of theGaudiya style inIndian music andliterature. Also, in the seventeenth century, Sangeet Shastrakar Maheswara Mohapatra of Odisha mentions seven types of dance styles in his Sanskrit treatiseAbhinaya Chandrika including Gaudiya dance.[12]
The theoretical foundations of Gaurika dance can be found in the ancient Sanskrit textNatyashastra;[13] Its existence in ancient times is attested by dance poses in sculptures of theGaudiya style temple and archaeological sites associated withHinduism,Buddhism andJainism and it is mentioned by ancient poets of Bengal.[14] After India's independence from colonial rule, it underwent revival, reconstruction and expansion in the 1980s.
^Roma Chatterji (2005).Folklore and the Construction of National TraditionArchived February 12, 2018, at theWayback Machine.Indian Folklife19 (Folklore Abroad: On the Diffusion and Revision of Sociocultural Categories): 9. Accessed January 2014. "a classical dance tradition that has vanished from the urban areas".
^Utpal Kumar Banerjee (2006).Indian performing arts: a mosaic. New Delhi: Harman Publishing House.ISBN9788186622759. p. 79: "re-creating Gaudiya Nritya as one of the acceptable classical styles will need a formal framework".
^Leela Venkataraman (2006).Negotiating the Extremes: dance.India International Centre Quarterly,33 (1): 93-102.(subscription required) "one may have reservations about the classical dance repertoire visualised by [Mukherjee]".
^Roma Chatterji (2005). p. 9: "Mukherjee tries to reconstitute a Bengali aesthetic within the perspective of pan-Indian civilisation".
Media related toGaudiya Nritya at Wikimedia Commons
