Analysis and Interpretation of Indian Classical Dance

Partha Pratim Das & Arun Kumar Majumdar

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India

Amita Dutt

Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, India

November 26, 2014

Abstract

Indian Classical Dance1 (ICD), an ancient heritage of India, consists of visual (posture, movements, andexpressions), auditory (music, tempo, rhythm, and intonation) and textual (lyric of the song) information thattell a story through body movements (anga-bheva, uro-bheva, parsva-bheva, shiro-bheva, drishti-bheva, and pada-bheva), hand gestures or hasta-mudras (sanjukta-hasta and asanjukta-hasta), vocal and instrumental music, facialexpression or emotions (nava-rasa)’s, costume, and make-up. With time, these dance forms have been interpretedand performed by different artists in different ways and various sets of complex rules have emerged for bodypostures and gestures.

Recent advances in sensor technology have led to the development of affordable multimedia cameras like Kinectthat can detect and track various human movements in real-time synchronized with audio streams. While Kinectsuse RGB, depth and skeleton streams, nowadays we also have easy and affordable access to multi-modal inputsfrom various wearable sensors including the piezoelectric and the inertial. Inputs from such sensors can be helpanalyse and interpret the multimedia aspects of ICD. It first revolves around the analysis of video (in depth andRGB) and later audio is added to synchronize and make up a complete dance. Some of the interesting problemsof such dance research include possible encoding of dance postures using Labanotation2, classification of Adavu’s3,analyses of Bheda’s4 and recognition of rasa’s5 or emotions.

In this presentation we first take a tour of ICD with specific reference to Bharatanatyam to appreciate thewealth of open problems in dance interpretation that can use variety of computer vision and machine learningtechniques. Specifically we outline an architecture and a hybrid strategy to automate the analysis and interpre-tation of different forms of ICD. Incidentally hardly any work has been done in computer analysis of dance. Andwhatever little research exists, they deal primarily with Western dance forms like Ballet, Samba, and Salsa.

We conclude with a plan for future research in ICD with reference to improvements in current techniques,better recognition of body movements, hand gestures and emotions, detection of tabla beats and synchronizationof music with movements and transcription and interpretation of ICD.

1ICD has 8 distinct styles - Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Odissi, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, and Sattriya. Wespecifically focus on Bharatanatyam (BN)

2A notation system for recording and analysing human movement that was created by Rudolf Laban in the 1920’s and further developedby Ann Hutchinson Guest and others later.

3Elementary movements in making a Bharatanatyam dance4Means Difference – used to denote Movement of a body-part.5A rasa (’juice’ or ’essence’) denotes an essential mental state and is the dominant emotional theme of a work of dance.

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