Bala

Bala (1976)

"THE GREATEST BHARATNATYAM DANCER EVER" - SATYAJIT RAY

A documentary about the aging prima ballerina Balasaraswati (popularly known as "Bala"), the most famous exponent of the Bharatanatyam dance.

Date of release
1976-01-01
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (3)
Runtime
31m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Satyajit Ray

Casting

Interesting facts

Bala is a 1976 documentary film made by Satyajit Ray, about a Bharatanatyam dancer, Balasaraswati, fondly known as "Bala". The film was jointly produced by National Centre for the Performing Arts and Government of Tamil Nadu. The thirty-three-minute documentary features the life and some of the works by Balasaraswati in the form of narration and dance, starring herself. At the age of fourteen, Ray had seen a performance of Balasaraswati in Kolkata, then known as "Calcutta", in 1935, when she was seventeen years old.

Background

Tanjore Balasaraswati, fondly known as Balasaraswati or Bala, was born on 13 May 1918 in Chennai, then known as Madras. Seven earlier generations of her family worked predominantly in dance and music, Bala started her Bharatanatyam training at the age of five, under Nattuvanar Kandappa Pillai and made her dancing debut in 1925, at the age of seven, at Kancheepuram at the Kamakshi Amman Temple.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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